Christian Right lies about abortion

Commenters sympathetic to the Christian Right have been perpetuating the following lies about abortion:

1. Legalization of abortion caused the massive increase in illegitimate births, and if we make abortion illegal again, this will end the problem of unmarried women giving birth.

2. Liberals “glorify” abortion.

3. Adoption is the solution, not abortion.

4. Abortion it the second-most evil thing in the world. The most evil thing, of course, is racism.

So here are my responses:

1. Watergate also happened in the 1970s, but no one’s blaming Watergate for the increase in unmarried births.

A more correct history is that there was a “sexual revolution” which began in the 1960s. Before the sexual revolution, there was a stigma to having premarital sex. Today there is a stigma to being a virgin; having premarital sex is considered the norm.

What contributed to the sexual revolution was that both birth control and antibiotics drastically reduced the negative consequences of sexual promiscuity, and those negative consequences were getting pregnant and getting a venereal disease. At least getting pregnant used to be considered a negative consequence. More on that later.

The increase in premarital sex led, not surprisingly, to an increase in the number of women getting pregnant, because women from the bottom half of the bell curve are too stupid to properly use birth control. But not all women took advantage of legalized abortion like they were supposed do. The increasing numbers of unmarried women giving birth led to the destigmafication of unmarried motherhood. The expansion of welfare benefits of the 1960s also contributed to the destigmaficaiton of unmarried motherhood because now we actually pay women money when they have children they can’t support on their own, which seems like a reward to me.

Now that everything has been destigmafied, making abortion illegal is NOT going to stop the premarital sex because no one cares about becoming an unmarried mother any more. At this point in time, making abortion illegal will only mean MORE illegitimate babies and MORE welfare payments. I say no thanks.

2. This is just plain untrue. I haven’t seen anyone glorifying abortion since the movie Cider House Rules (which was a really good movie). Liberals, today, are primarily glorifying homosexuality; it’s hard to turn on the television or go to a movie without seeing homosexuality shown in as good a light as possible.

But on the other side of the political spectrum, the Christian Right is busy glorifying motherhood. This is contributing to the destigmification of unmarried motherhood.

3. If you add up the numbers, adoption is not a solution at all. 41% of births are now to unmarried mothers, there simply aren’t enough potential adoptive parents out there.

On the other hand, there’s the odd fact that people who want to adopt a white baby can’t find. Heck, people can’t even find domestically-born black babies to adopt so they’ve been adopting black kids from Africa. The reality is that women do not give up their babies for adoption. Not in any meaningful numbers. The Christian Right only talks about adoption when they are arguing with a liberal about abortion. Out there on the street they are encouraging motherhood. They know that it’s a lot easier to convince a woman to give birth and collect welfare than it is to convince a woman to give up her baby for adoption.

4.Who can say what’s evil and what’s not? They are both rather new ideas. No one in the Roman Empire, for example, gave a hoot about either racism or abortion. The Romans allowed fathers to kill their living children. Why would they care about a fetus? Jesus never mentioned abortion, and it's not mentioned anywhere in the Torah. Abortion being the ultimate evil is a newly invented concept.

* * *

The best comment was written by Eugenick:

We need a one-child policy like that of China, in which women who are pregnant the 2nd time either pay up the fine (or call it "tax" if you like), or are forced to abort and are then presented with the aborted fetus as psychological torture for the premeditated damage to society's average IQ and time preference (they fully deserve it, I believe).

It's the only way if you want to avoid the dystopian future depicted in the movie Idiocracy. But if Christian fanatics want their descendants to live in a society in which science cannot be done because there is no one left who is smart enough to understand the work of the forefathers, than go ahead. Oppose abortion. Promote stupidity. China will most certainly be thanking you for bringing down the intelligence of White nations.

Comments

[map]

If anything, abortion should be mandatory, with no woman allowed to give birth unless she gets permission from the man that got her pregnant.

[GenGG]

Hear, hear!

[destructure]

Half Sigma

I largely agree with your first point with two exceptions. First, you should include no fault divorce, declining age of menarche and women entering the workforce as contributing to the normalization of single mothers. And, second, if birth control reduces the consequences of promiscuity then so does abortion. Since abortion is generally used as a backup for failed birth control.

Regarding your second point, you respond to the claim that liberals glorify abortion by saying the religious glorify single mothers. That's cute but it doesn't work. Liberals have promoted abortion as the centerpiece and symbol of feminism and women's rights. I'm not aware that the religious have promoted illegitimacy. I suppose they consider single mothers preferable to abortion. But its more a case of the lesser of two evils than advocacy. If anything, the religious advocate abstinence.

Regarding your third point, it contradicts itself. If couples are going overseas to adopt then obviously giving up a child for adoption is a viable option for at least some of the single mothers. Though I certainly share your unspoken concern that perhaps its better that low class women have abortions instead.

Regarding your fourth point. If you're going to be nihilistic about morality then who can say that anything is good or evil? I personally take a rather consequentialist view of morality.

[Flico]

1.Has anybody ever claimed that racism is the most evil thing in the world? Besides a few loons?
2. You are thinking of pre-Christian Romans, indeed they did not disapprove of homicide per se as in many pagan systems, but Christiandom changed everything.
3. Watergate probably had some indirect effect by undermining trust in the moral authority of the state.

[Samson J.]

I'm glad to see you're taking a slow step towards actually discussing the issue instead of dismissing it.

****Liberals “glorify” abortion.****

Obviously, any blanket statement about what "all liberals" do is bound to fail. But certainly some liberals do literally glorify abortion as something that "frees" women (see the femblogs if you don't believe me). Many more glorify, if not abortion exactly, then a philosophy of radical personal autonomy out of which the acceptance of abortion springs as a natural consequence.

****4.Who can say what’s evil and what’s not?****

This is the heart of the issue, and I'm glad to see you ask the question, because it's illustrative: of course if you don't think it's possible to discern good and evil then you won't see why abortion is a big deal. I would suggest to you, though, that you probably don't really believe that "no one can say what's evil and what's not." I'm sure you think some things are evil.

As for Jesus and the Torah, if you're expecting them to spoon-feed you everything, you're going to be disappointed. Sometimes moral principles have to be worked out from other principles.

****Abortion being the ultimate evil is a newly invented concept.****

Abortion being *some* kind of evil is as old as Hippocrates and his oath, and probably older.

[Samson J.]

(My Captcha was "EUCHARIST". Awesome.)

[Blue willow]

If anything, abortion should be mandatory, with no woman allowed to give birth unless she gets permission from the man that got her pregnant.

Posted by: map | July 18, 2012 at 11:41 PM

--------------------

Sorry pal, that is a creepy idea and will never happen. if you don't want to be a dad then don't have unprotected sex.

[Honest Bogosian]

Re abortion being (not) mentioned in the Torah: Is Exodus 21:22 part of the Torah or not? (It doesn't really seem to support the abortion=murder dogma of some present-day people, though.)

[HS: That talks about a miscarriage that a woman didn't want. Abortion is when a woman doesn't WANT to give birth. And it's treated more like a property crime, like you accidentally break someone's window. I think everyone agrees that you should pay the window-owner if you break their window, but if someone wants to break his or her OWN window, there's nothing wrong with that.]

[Kaz]

@destructure

Seems like you missed something, single mothers don't want to give up their kids for adoption because of the benefits the government provides them. Welfare, housing, etc.. All great things which outweigh the cost of raising children they way most single mothers raise them (i.e. prison). And more importantly giving up inferior spawn to great parents won't make them anything more than marginally better. A waste of resources really, better to stop the problem at the root.

Also abortion IS NOT legitimate birth control, it is the back up for birth control, if you're having abortions dozens of times a year then you're insane, but I'm sure some nut out there is like this. I don't speak from experience, but I'm assuming having your vagina vacuumed doesn't sound like a pleasant experience.

This doesn't even bring up other reasons for abortion, like genetic issues. Do you really want to be sentenced to a life of misery because you can't abort your down syndrome 10 week old fetus? I've seen people with these kids, and it's an awful life, and it hurts the other children in the family who have to sacrifice their lives to take care of their stunted sibling.

The real reason the religious right in America don't like abortion is because they've been told to. A growing slave class of slack jaws is just what certain people in this country want.

[WmarkW]

Anti-abortion is principally a religious position, held by people who believe in fetal person based on a God that sees the present and future simultaneously (i.e. it's already a person to Him.) Non-marital sex is an inevitable outcome of later marriages; women who need an education won't marry until 25 on average, pushing the male average above that number, and you can't expect celibacy that deep into life.

The disaster of sexual liberty has been that NAMs have the same rights as everyone else, but not the same motivations and skill sets to prevent the downside. A white with a future will take sensible precautions against STDs and unintended pregnancy. To a poor black girl with no real prospects, raising a child at the expense of the state, and to some extent an absent father, isn't that bad a prospect.

[famously nameless]

"Abortion it the second-most evil thing in the world. The most evil thing, of course, is racism"

I disagree slightly. There's a tie with the most evil thing in the world, and that is sexism.

(Because all women, ALL, are kind-hearted souls with the average IQ of physicists & doctors, but demonic men maliciously held them back, and by holding them back, society is now 500 years delayed in terms of scientific achievement).

[asdf]

2) They really do.

4) Your really bad at moral epistimology. I wouldn't go down that route.

[destructure]

"Seems like you missed something..." -- Kaz

I haven't missed anything. You're making assumptions that don't apply. You're assuming that I'm anti abortion. Which isn't exactly the case. What I'm really against is stupid, irresponsible people getting knocked up in the first place.

***

"if you don't want to be a dad then don't have unprotected sex." -- Blue Willow

You took the words right out of my mouth. That's kind of my attitude towards abortion, in general.

[Mark Caplan]

It's worth keeping in mind that safe abortion that wasn't likely to kill or mame the woman wasn't possible until the advent of modern medicine, anesthesia and antibiotics. When pre-20th century theologians wrote of abortion, they were writing about a procedure that was either ineffective or likely to kill the woman, so their moral pronouncements are irrelevant to the present day.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the majority of fertilized eggs abort naturally. Is that fact a great tragedy? Hardly.

[Turambar]

"2. Liberals “glorify” abortion. "

Of course they do. To them its a sacrament.

Have you read the comments on the New York Times "Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’"?

for instance....
" Marie
New York, NY

*This* is why abortion needs to be safe, legal, affordable, and destigmatized.

I'm kind of impressed that the author wrote 6 pages arguing for legal abortion without mentioning the A- word once. There is no reason, in 2012, that an unplanned pregnancy at the wrong time with the wrong guy should be a life sentence to poverty and heartache. "

So the woman dating dodgy black guys who knock her up immediately string her along for years while she is completely oblivious. Probably because she was drugged up. And she has a great life plan of majoring in sociology and dropping out of school.

This woman had major, major issues (probably rebelling against her square small town upbringing because the media culture encouraged her to do so) that were never going to get sorted out until life smacked her in the face.

Waving a magic wander of abortion would mean that she was a minimum wage sociology grad who had been through a series of abuse relationship with black boyfriends and picked up a few stds and terminal self esteem problems she treated with drug abuse.

[Kosher Cowboy]

That moral relativism you're wearing? It doesn't become you. Just sayin'.

[outlaw josey wales]

Republicans don't like NAMs, Democrats like contraception, so why aren't contraceptives like the pill freely available without insurance to all poor people that want it? Seems like a win-win.

Certainly there are negative consequences to having contraception, but that genie is out of the bottle and is never going back.

[Eugenick]

We need a one-child policy like that of China, in which women who are pregnant the 2nd time either pay up the fine (or call it "tax" if you like), or are forced to abort and are then presented with the aborted fetus as psychological torture for the premeditated damage to society's average IQ and time preference (they fully deserve it, I believe).

It's the only way if you want to avoid the dystopian future depicted in the movie Idiocracy. But if Christian fanatics want their descendants to live in a society in which science cannot be done because there is no one left who is smart enough to understand the work of the forefathers, than go ahead. Oppose abortion. Promote stupidity. China will most certainly be thanking you for bringing down the intelligence of White nations.

[Dan]

"4.Who can say what’s evil and what’s not? They are both rather new ideas. No one in the Roman Empire, for example, gave a hoot about either racism or abortion. The Romans allowed fathers to kill their living children. Why would they care about a fetus? Jesus never mentioned abortion, and it's not mentioned anywhere in the Torah. Abortion being the ultimate evil is a newly invented concept."

Nope. Commandment number six is that whole killing bit. Cain killed Abel and it was really bad.

If you judge that there is a person in there (not a loony assumption at all, what with all the hi-tech imagery and all) then ancient morality takes over.

Speaking of which, two docs in ultra-left Maryland are on each on trial for *five counts* of murder one, for late term abortions.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-30/justice/justice_maryland-abortion-doctors-murder_1_steven-brigham-abortion-clinic-fetuses?_s=PM:JUSTICE

[Peter Fallow]

H.S.:
...abortion being the ultimate evil is a newly invented concept.

It might be possible to argue that the particular rhetoric used in the modern abortion debate, i.e. fetal "rights talk," is a recent phenomenon. However, it is simply not true that abortion being a grave evil is a "newly invented concept."

From the Christian Didache, Chapter 2:

And this is the second commandment of the teaching: you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not corrupt children, nor practice sexual deviation; you shall not steal; nor practice calling on spiritual guides; nor use sorcery; you shall not procure an abortion, nor practice infanticide; you shall not covet your neighbor['s] goods.

The Didache was a first century early Christian document.

[Newdist]

HS, have you even looked at the numbers? IIRC, there was only about a 6% drop in the birth rate after abortion was legalized, even though 1/3 of pregnancies were being aborted. In other words, legalized abortion led to tons of extra pregnancies, all aborted.

It amazes me that you can't understand the mechanism here:
0. contraception and the sexual revolution causes women to get much sluttier (I think you're on board with this part)
1. Legalized abortion allows some women to get even sluttier, because in practice abortion is 100% reliable and contraception is not. Furthermore, contraception must be done before sex, but the abortion decision can be put off until about 3-4 months after getting pregnant (technically 9 months).
2. To match this, ALL women get sluttier. Even the pro-life ones. Even the ones who were prolife but then changed their minds when they got pregnant. You talk about economics and sex and female behavior all the time and yet you still don't seem to understand this part.

[Scarlet Knight]

Adoptions should increase until parents stop adopting foreign babies.

Once we get to that point, then we can figure out what to do when too many babies are given up for adoption.

[not a hacker]

"Has anybody ever claimed that racism is the most evil thing in the world?"

They may not claim it expressly, but listen to people under 35. They're constantly talking about "hatin'." Any criticism of anything or anyone=hate. This equation only exists due to the elevation of blacks to sacred cow status and the adoption of black norms by everyone else. Thus by making racism the greatest evil, everyone else is absolved from an obligation of public decency as well.

[Severn]

>"Now that everything has been destigmafied, making abortion illegal is NOT going to stop the premarital sex because no one cares about becoming an unmarried mother any more."

Obviously, making abortion illegal again is a necessary if not sufficient step in restoring stigma.

[Severn]

>"Anti-abortion is principally a religious position, held by people who believe in fetal person based on a God that sees the present and future simultaneously"

That makes no sense. The pro-abortion position is the one which requires mystical mumbo-jumbo to try to explain how the mere act of passing through the birth-canal confers person-hood on what was a clump of inanimate matter a second earlier.

[Severn]

>"Who can say what’s evil and what’s not?"

We can. In fact, we must. It's part of our civic obligation.

The Romans had a very clear idea of good and evil. The slave rebellion was "evil", for example. Their ideas of good and evil differed from ours, but they did not abstain from the business of deciding what is good and what is evil. No society can ever do that.

[WRB]

"4.Who can say what’s evil and what’s not? They are both rather new ideas. No one in the Roman Empire, for example, gave a hoot about either racism or abortion. "

Partly false. Some (pagan) Greeks cared about abortion; the Hippocratic Oath says "I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion."

[Anthony]

#1 is not a lie. It's a debatable idea. The changes in social mores which came with birth-control pills and the legalization of abortion lead people to have more extra-marital sex, and to be somewhat less careful about it. This leads to more illegitimacy, as women end up realizing that, no, they're not going to have an abortion after all.

#2 is not a lie. Some feminists (who are almost all liberals) do glorify abortion. See, for instance: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/if-men-could-get-pregnant_b_82467.html Since liberals aren't really worried that abortion will be significantly restricted anytime soon, they're not concentrating on it, but if the threat became real to them, you'd see a lot more glorification of abortion.

#3 Probably every white and asian baby aborted in the U.S. could be adopted out, within the U.S. The same is probably not true for black babies. (If people are adopting babies from Africa, it's probably to avoid getting crack babies. Whether that's rational, I don't know.) But, as you point out, lots of women would end up deciding at the last moment to keep the baby instead of putting it up for adoption. So it's complicated, but it's not fair to call the statement a lie.

#4 is a caricature of what Christian Right commenters are saying. If one believes that abortion is homicide (much less murder), it's the most evil thing in our society *which isn't already illegal*.

[MC]

HS, as the comments show, you have failed to address even the most obviously foreseeable of counterarguments to your original post. If you're not going to engage your intellectual opponents on a serious level, then you shouldn't write about serious topics. It just makes you look silly.

[MC]

"It's the only way if you want to avoid the dystopian future depicted in the movie Idiocracy. But if Christian fanatics want their descendants to live in a society in which science cannot be done because there is no one left who is smart enough to understand the work of the forefathers, than go ahead."

Among college-educated people, only the religious are having children at all (see Romney, Mitt). It's abortion that gave us the empty womb of intelligent people.

[HS: Another lie. The majority of abortions go to poor women. The elites are very good at not getting pregnant in the first place.]

[KLO]

I have done insignificant scholarship on the history of abortion. The Hippocratic Oath does mention abortion; however, not for the reasons that you think. The concern was not that abortion was immoral. After all, ancient Greeks practiced infanticide and no writings from the time condemn the practice so far as I know. The reason the Hippocratic Oath prohibits the use of a "pessary to cause abortion" is because it was believed that this unusually dangerous to the pregnant woman. At the time, there were other approaches in use at the time that the Oath does not condemn.

Both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas wrote about abortion. Augustine confessed that he did not know when life began, and was solidly against treating women who had abortions as murderers. Thomas Aquinas believed that fetal animation was caused by the soul taking up residence inside the fetus. Before this point, there was no life worth protecting and so abortion was considered something other than murder -- a perversion of the proper role of sex and sinful, but not murder.

[thordaddy]

At this stage of our collective descent into all out radical autonomy, it is "a going with the descent" to prophesize that "illegitimacy/single motherhood" (itself, a false conception) will certainly not decline with a broad suppression/rejection of the "right to abortion."

The act of abortion and those who "believe" in "it" are by their very own "belief," self-annihilators.

There is the female who "aborts." She is LITERALLY killing a part of herself. Self-annihilator.

And then there is the HBDer who "believes" in abortion such that he "believes" in his mother's "fundamental right" to have killed him in utero. Your everyday mainstream HBD lacky is a dispassionate and purely objective purveyor of self-annihilation. Think of the power he cleverly puts into the hands OF EVERY SINGLE female now and forever?

To reject abortion and the "belief" in abortion is to reject self-annihilation and the perverted and degraded "belief" that one's mother had/has a "fundamental right" to kill her child in utero.

That this "belief" seems to strengthen going into adulthood for many of the radical HBD liberals should say something about the core of the HBD movement.

[Camlost]

No need for a 1-child policy, just end welfare and/or any other type of government benefit for single mothers.

Or, at least, end it for additional children after the first.

[Brandon]

"Jesus never mentioned abortion, and it's not mentioned anywhere in the Torah. Abortion being the ultimate evil is a newly invented concept."

In fact, Exodus 21:22 specifically says that if a man strikes a pregnant woman, leading to a miscarriage, he must pay whatever her husband demands. That is, causing a miscarriage was classified as a crime against the husband, not as a crime against the fetus. Inducing a miscarriage with the husband's blessing, then, i.e. abortion, would not be regarded as a crime at all.

[John]

Can anyone provide a decent argument for why abortion should be legal that could not be equally applied to a 1-week old newborn?

I have yet to encounter one.

[HS: The newborn has experienced life outside the womb, making it more of a real person, but I don't think it has a soul yet.]

[TWTS]

A one child policy is stupid. Everyone should be allowed to have a child if they want. After that, if you're on welfare you will be temporarily sterilized until you get off of it. Meanwhile, smart and successful people will be encouraged with cash incentives to breed more. Our problem isn't just that the stupid are breeding too much, but that the smart aren't breeding enough.

[LaPanache]

The liberalism vilification on this blog is asinine. Many commenters seem to accord the wrong motivation to liberal ideas as if all liberals are simple-thinking beings without propensity for complex thought. Liberals are pro-welfare because women have a right to prosperous motherhood at all costs? NOT the most used reason. The idea is that once a child is born into destitute conditions, a country like America cannot abandon this child to give the finger to the incompetent parents who brought him here. Camlost may propose "just end welfare and/or any other type of government benefit for single mothers" but we do not want our people to starve on the streets like they would have if this was India. Do plenty of people find loopholes through which to milk the system? Absolutely. But instead of harping on and on about how much you hate unproductive people, take a look at the lives most people on welfare lead - it is hardly like having a laptop to type in Half-sigma type of life. They brought it upon themselves yes, but their children do not deserve a left-to-die policy; that will never happen in a first-world country like the US.

As for illegalizing abortion? There WILL be more illegitimate children of the unpleasant variety because the type of woman who is determined/intelligent/meticulous enough to be able to successfully avoid pregnancy for ten years of sexual activity pre-marriage and pre-stability is also the type of woman who will take the first plane to a foreign country to abort an unaffordable pregnancy during her junior year in college just in the rare case it happens. And most of these people who are responsible enough to afford adoption, probably (and this is not discussed in educated, polite circles) have reservations about adopting a baby from the dumb woman (who also mated with a dumb man) who manages to get pregnant and keeps it, albeit her life situation which is farthest from optimal to rear a child in as far as the adopting couple is concerned. Not saying adoptions from the ghetto or trailer trash neighborhoods don't happen, but they will hardly be mainstream. This is absolutely not the solution to single motherhood. Neither are any turn-back-the-clock like eliminate birth-control or shame pre-marital sex policies going to work. Wistful conservative thinking like this on these blogs makes me realize that no matter how much half-sigma I read I will never be a rightist.

[Lexus Liberal]

No one wants to point out that the American eugenics program has greatly benefited and contributed to the rise of American society, along with "importing" Ashkanezi Jews and German scientists from WWII.

Without the eugenics movement, there wouldn't be a publically funded Planned Parenthood and the degradation of American welfare society would have been hasten by the legion of illegal immigrants and prole single parent families.

The solution is certainly impose a tax and have a limit on those who are "irresponsible" or "burden of society", while providing incentives to the Upper-middle class through child tax breaks and better childcare services for dual income households.

The government can use the threat of cutting off welfare and denial of public education to those who have more children than they are allowed. Or perhaps have mandatory birth control starting at fifteen for all women and men, then require the couple to apply for a permit to have children. If people want more than one, then they will need to be financially stable enough to afford the added liability.

When the average citizen is too inept to make basic logical decisions, government should make the decision on their behalf for maximum social utility and benefit to the majority. Isn't this what liberals and socialists dreamt of as an ideal society?

[destructure]

Regarding the issue of whether abortion encourages promiscuity, illegitimacy, single mothers, etc. I think it's obvious the two form a positive feedback loop. The more promiscuous people are the more they want the option to abort. And the more available abortion is the less incentive one has to restrain themselves. People are using it as a birth control backup plan. There's even an "abortion pill" called Plan B.

People saying that without abortion the illegitimacy rate among poor women would skyrocket are mistaken. It was much lower before abortion. Abortion clearly isn't the only reason its increased but its a contributing factor. Obviously, welfare is the number one contributing factor to illegitimacy. If welfare ended, then illegitimacy would be restigmatized, people would be more responsible about using birth control, and the marriage rate would increase.

The problem is that liberals want to protect people from the consequences of their actions. But protecting people from the consequences only encourages the behavior leading to those consequences. Women SHOULD be afraid of getting pregnant. That's the only way they'll keep their legs closed. Just like making men financially responsible is the only way to get them to keep their flies zipped.

***

Several have mentioned the Greeks, Romans, Augustine, Aquinas, etc. in discussing whether abortion was previously considered immoral, murder, etc. I'll point out that the Israelites as well as medieval Church both considered Onanism akin to murder as semen was literally thought to be a small person. These beliefs are obviously inaccurate but not entirely wrong, either. More importantly, it shows that objections to abortion are NOT a modern idea. For those who don't know what Onanism is, it's named after a man named Onan in the Old Testament who was struck down by the man upstairs for making an ~early withdrawal~. In other words, the purpose of sex is procreation. So if Onanism is considered a sin then abortion definitely was. On the other hand, the OT gives parents the right to kill rebellious children. Though killing rebellious children isn't the same as abortion. Particularly since obeying one's parents is one of the 10 commandments. To equate the two would be like saying "though shalt not kill" voids the death penalty, war, etc. Which obviously wasn't the intention of that commandment.

Don't read too much into my religious discussion. It's impossible to discuss how pre modern society viewed abortion without discussing religion.

[Severn]

>" Augustine confessed that he did not know when life began, and was solidly against treating women who had abortions as murderers. Thomas Aquinas believed that fetal animation was caused by the soul taking up residence inside the fetus. Before this point, there was no life worth protecting and so abortion was considered something other than murder -- a perversion of the proper role of sex and sinful, but not murder."

We live in the modern scientific age, so we are not bound by the notions of Augustine or Aquinas. Modern science is crystal clear about when life begins, and it is not at the instant of birth.

[chucho]

Abortion is about women's power, period.

[Severn]

"if you don't want to be a dad then don't have unprotected sex." -- Blue Willow

If this principle applied equally to women, I'd have no problem with it. But nobody is going to tell a woman "if you don't want to be a mom, don't have unprotected sex". Women have rights, men have responsibilities.

[MC]

[HS: Another lie. The majority of abortions go to poor women. The elites are very good at not getting pregnant in the first place.]

Oh, but when they do they get an abortion. Plus abortion as a backstop separates sex from child-rearing in their life script. Imagine woman D, for dumb, and woman S, for smart.

Prior to Roe v. Wade:

Woman D gets knocked up, has a shotgun wedding, has 3-6 kids.

Woman S goes to college, gets married, has 2-5 kids.

After Roe v. Wade:

Woman D gets knocked up, has a baby, then another, then another, then a bunch of abortions (mix up the order however you want, but poor women have the most abortions AND the most kids).

Woman S. now views pre-marital sex as standard in every romantic relationship, and child-rearing as optional due to Roe v. Wade. (Even with the pill she had a risk of getting pregnant). Therefore, she very possibly never gets married, and after one kid she murders every one that comes after.

The scoreboard:

Pre-RvW:
D = 3-6
S = 2-5

Post-RvW
D = 3-4
S = 0.5

[MC]

[HS: The newborn has experienced life outside the womb, making it more of a real person, but I don't think it has a soul yet.]

1. HS believes in souls?

2. HS believes that newborns have no soul?

3. HS believes that newborns have no right to live/may be killed?

The mind reels.

[destructure]

Dr Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory lists 5 foundations that underlie morality: care, fairness (proportionality), loyalty, respect for authority and purity. All 5 are necessary for sustainability. Conservatives have all 5. Liberals such as yourself have a one foundation morality based on care but are deficient in the other 4. You are morally unbalanced and that prevents you from reaching reasonable conclusions.

For example, you say "a country like America cannot abandon this child to give the finger to the incompetent parents who brought him here."

Sure we can. And we must. But your psychology can't accept it. And that's a problem because you would let your "care" for poor children destroy society. Consider a life raft that's full. Conservatives would see the people in the water and realize that letting more in would sink the life raft. But liberals would ignore the consequences, let more people in and end up drowning everyone.

Now, I know that your mind can't accept that. It fights against it and tries to reason its way out of the problem. But it really is as simple as liberals ignoring reality & consequences to reach the conclusions they find emotionally satisfying.

[destructure]

That last comment was to La Panache.

[payaso]

HS--your post is mysterious. Who are these nameless commenters that you complain of? There are no links, quotes, or other means to determine whether your characterization of their argument is reasonable or accurate. It has been a while since I studied the subject, but I think this might be what is known in logic as a 'strawman' fallacy.

[Fo' Shizzle]

"Wistful conservative thinking like this on these blogs makes me realize that no matter how much half-sigma I read I will never be a rightist."

Go to the McCarren pool. You'll become a rightist real quick.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"The best comment was written by Eugenick:

We need a one-child policy like that of China, in which women who are pregnant the 2nd time either pay up the fine (or call it "tax" if you like), or are forced to abort and are then presented with the aborted fetus as psychological torture for the premeditated damage to society's average IQ and time preference (they fully deserve it, I believe)."

This is the stupidest comment.

In addition to being morally unacceptable, using an aborted fetus as "psychological torture" is likely to generate a public backlash against abortion. Even Hitler's Germany backed off from their "Tiergartten 4" policy of killing the mentally disabled because of public outcry from German families with kin suffering from Downs syndrome. Even putting aside the immorality of forcible abortions, how long would it before "Eugenick's" policy loses all support?

And why does Eugenick want whites to be restricted to only one child?

Secondly, it's not even necessary to require temporary or long term sterilization in exchange for long term welfare usage. Simply cutting off welfare benefits to parents (but not necessarily individuals) seems to be enough to lower the birth rate of the underclass. After the GOP implemented welfare reform in 1996, the black birth rate fell from ~2.45 to 1.9-2.0. Without welfare, the underclass will use more abortion and birth control and have fewer children because they would have to pay for their own offspring.

Indirect Eugenics is the best way to build long term support for a white America demographic policy because more direct forms of eugenics will likely garner a backlash.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"No one wants to point out that the American eugenics program has greatly benefited and contributed to the rise of American society,"

The American eugenics movement was never as strong as it was in other countries. The US eugenicists were especially weak compared to the most powerful eugenics society in the world, the British Eugenics Society, which enjoyed the support of powerful British leftists like Lord Keynes, JBS Haldhane and Julian Huxley, and conservative British support.

The British movement had its flaws too. Britian's eugenic's society supported sterilizing the British working class because the British upper class had a lower birth rate than the working class. This difference in fertility rates was first noted by Galton.

However, the British Eugenics societies' support for sterilizing many working class Britons led to a backlash that was often led by working class unions who didn't want their members sterilized and because white countries need a white working class to perform blue collar labor. This anti-Eugenics movement in Britain occurred even before the start of WWII.

[RandomMedStudent]

I'm not sure if I buy the idea that if women have more than 1 children each the United States will move towards a dysgenic future depicted in Idiocracy.

Remember people tend to reproduce with people like themselves. Although dumb people reproduce more, they usually reproduce with another dumb person. They are not overwhelming the smarter side of the gene pool - as long as people practice assortative mating with respect to intelligence, there will always be people smart enough to understand science, albeit as a smaller share of the general population.

[LaPanache]

"I know that your mind can't accept that. It fights against it and tries to reason its way out of the problem. But it really is as simple as liberals ignoring reality & consequences to reach the conclusions they find emotionally satisfying." -destructure

I am not liberal. And as far as they are concerned, it really is as simple as conservatives ignoring every person who isn't in their league to implement a society which they would find financially satisfying. You are so brilliant for having figured out who stands where when the question of individual vs. society is concerned and such a unique conservative for believing that "liberals ignore reality" and that if only conservative values were brought back, the US would become utopia. I hope you are a fan of sarcasm.

I am not fool enough to believe that only if prole people had access to everything BigLawyers did, said proles too would live in apartments overlooking Central Park. But unlike a lot of other HBDers, I do not want to leave them to die either. Why is it not my moral responsibility to help my fellow humans? Just like you can rationalize that you meet all of Dr. Haidt's criteria to be a moral person, so can I. It is laughable when you state your position like it is objective reality.

"Sure we can. And we must. But your psychology can't accept it. And that's a problem because you would let your "care" for poor children destroy society."

Adopting a 'you had that kid you can't feed? not my problem.' mentality is something we absolutely can adopt. But we won't. Because what separates a first-world country from a third-world country is the difference in its treatment of those people. You call the proliferation of those others destruction of society; I call starvation of those people a destructive society. Countries are deemed first-world when they agree with me.

[Bill]

"if you don't want to be a dad then don't have unprotected sex." -- Blue Willow

If this principle applied equally to women, I'd have no problem with it. But nobody is going to tell a woman "if you don't want to be a mom, don't have unprotected sex". Women have rights, men have responsibilities."

-

Teenagers are told "unprotected sex leads to babies" All. The Time. The issue is that most poor, dumb, naive girls are easily gamed into unprotected sex by older males or they want a baby NOW for the instant sense of accomplishment and status it brings. Add on the fact that single motherhood has no stigma in the hood and these men who knock women up and leave them with 18-year obligations feel no responsibility.

[Bob Jones]

"We need a one-child policy like that of China..."

That is frankly, one of the dumbest and most unrealistic propositions I have ever heard. If anything, the presenting of an aborted fetus sounds like the statement of a sociopath. Your statement of "Idiocracy" is practically happening now. I could care less about intelligence. People are naturally dumb and lack good taste in general. Contemporary culture is more vulgar, simple, and less caring than any in the past.

A century ago, promiscuity was scolded and it is now glorified. Yet in the past, people were surely dumber due to the lack of an education and the fact that they were probably a prole (most likely an immigrant as well). People in general take things for granted when given the invention of convenience. A more important example, the automobile has ruined the nation in many categories yet presents a mundane but positive aspect in our lives.

People, especially the dumber ones are lemmings in the matter that they will follow what becomes socially acceptable even though they all will resemble complete morons and because of this, are practically disposable objects. Abortion isn't completely acceptable now, but in the future, most women will practice it as if it were an annual occurrence. Why should the doctor care? When most middle-income families are fleeing out to the country side to escape the once affluent but now squalid suburbs, he enjoys making a profit out of the new residents while living in the safe comfort of his gated castle.

[Peter A]

"If welfare ended, then illegitimacy would be restigmatized, people would be more responsible about using birth control, and the marriage rate would increase."

Conservatives tend to put far much blame on welfare. But this is of a piece with the conservative tendency to ignore the structural and technological changes that have happened over the last 60 years. This isn't 1950's America. Even poor people are far richer than they were in 1950. Even without welfare most people can scrape by if they get some crappy job - shelter, food, warmth are pretty much available to anyone. Toys and clothes are available literally for free, we have so much excess crap in this society. It's also simply much easier to care for a child in terms of the physical labor required (washing machines, disposable diapers, microwave food, etc. etc. ). I think technological change is a far bigger driver of social change than American conservatives want to admit.

[BrunoBrazil]

"
People saying that without abortion the illegitimacy rate among poor women would skyrocket are mistaken. It was much lower before abortion. Abortion clearly isn't the only reason its increased but its a contributing factor. Obviously, welfare is the number one contributing factor to illegitimacy. If welfare ended, then illegitimacy would be restigmatized, people would be more responsible about using birth control, and the marriage rate would increase."

In Brazil and other Latin American countries, welfare is much more limited. The money you can get from social welfare is much less than you can get from a minimum wage job.

But there are plenty of single mothers in the slums.

Reducing welfare or even ending it doesn´t reduce single motherhood.

Have you ever heard of someone intentionally declaring that will have one more baby to have more welfare? Probably the money you can get from TANF is lower than the costs of the baby. A single mom probably will count on the help of kin, friends and neighbors.

[BrunoBrazil]

Abortion isn't completely acceptable now, but in the future, most women will practice it as if it were an annual occurrence.

I seriouly doubt it.

Even where abortion is legal and safe, like the UK, women don´t have an abortion every year.

Go to your nearest Barnes and Noble and look for Marie Claire magazine, in the UK edition. It´s a woman´s magazine like Cosmopolitan.

In tis classified ads section, there are plenty of ads for abortion clinics.

[destructure]

"I am not liberal." -- La Panache

How are you not a liberal?

***

@ Peter A

You say "conservatives put far too much blame on welfare". But your explanation that "Even poor people are far richer than they were in 1950" contradicts you. If it were simply a matter of illegitimacy (or even fertility) increasing with wealth then wealthy people would be having more children. But that's not happening.

[destructure]

"But this is of a piece with the conservative tendency to ignore the structural and technological changes that have happened over the last 60 years." -- Peter A

I pretty much listed all the "structural and technological changes" in my first comment on this post. You should have read it before implying that I'd ignored them.

[not too late]

Liberals are pro-welfare because women have a right to prosperous motherhood at all costs? NOT the most used reason. The idea is that once a child is born into destitute conditions, a country like America cannot abandon this child to give the finger to the incompetent parents who brought him here. Camlost may propose "just end welfare and/or any other type of government benefit for single mothers" but we do not want our people to starve on the streets like they would have if this was India."

I can hardly wait till our ratio of smart to dumb matches that of India and we have over a billion people. Oh, it is going to be great!!

Remind me why smart people leave India.

[Drole Prole]

The sexualization of the media is just a way for corporations to maximize profits. Run away greed has led to mass neurosis and societal ruin. Now that a tiny handful of powerful corporations own most of the media, we are at the mercy of their whims. The pursuit of money enhances sociopathy.

[albert magnus]

"Even where abortion is legal and safe, like the UK, women don´t have an abortion every year."

In countries where there is no stigma, like Japan, its not hard to find women who've had 4 or 5.

[Severn]

>" I think technological change is a far bigger driver of social change than American conservatives want to admit."

Your discussion of "American conservatives" always has a gorillas-in-the-mist quality to it. In fairness, the same is true of HS.

If you want to know what American conservatives think, you could always, you know, ask them. And then believe what they tell you.

[Severn]

>"The issue is that most poor, dumb, naive girls are easily gamed into unprotected sex by older males or they want a baby NOW for the instant sense of accomplishment and status it brings."

The logical end-point of this "Women are too dumb to make intelligent choices for themselves" viewpoint is that women must have the ability to make choices taken away from them.

Perhaps that was were you were going all along. If it wasn't, then you need to drop this "poor, dumb, naive girls" line.

[Severn]

>"Neither are any turn-back-the-clock like eliminate birth-control or shame pre-marital sex policies going to work. Wistful conservative thinking like this on these blogs makes me realize that no matter how much half-sigma I read I will never be a rightist. "

I think it's sufficiently obvious that you do not WANT things "like eliminate birth-control or shame pre-marital sex policies" to work, whether they would work if implemented or not. Your stubborn denial of human nature is what marks you out as non-conservative.

[map]

The church has had a long history of opposing abortion. The church sees it as a form of infanticide, a practice that was common among the pagan Romans.

Among the pagan Romans, girls were considered a liability because of the necessity of providing dowries to marry them off. The more daughters you had, the smaller the dowry that could be provided and the lower the chance that she would ever marry. Thus, female children were often left to die of exposure.

The early Christians forbade this practice and often rescued abandoned girls. Eventually, Christianity took over the Roman Empire because the skewed pagan sex ratio could not compete with the more balanced sex ratio of the Christians.

The experience of taking over the Roman Empire is why Christianity often obsesses about family structure. They want to avoid the pagan practices that undid their competitors, including abortion.

I do agree that abortion is murder. I just don't care. We have too many garbage women producing too many garbage children that impose massive externalities on men and society. The notion that women have "reproductive rights" is the problem along with the assumption of live births being the default standard. Instead, abortion should be mandatory, with the requirement that women get permission from the responsible parties if they intend to give birth. Those parties must, in turn, prove that they have the means to raise children independent of the state.

Mandatory abortion also has the salutary effect of operating against Democrats.

[destructure]

"Have you ever heard of someone intentionally declaring that will have one more baby to have more welfare?" -- BrunoBrazil

I haven't claimed anyone was intentionally getting pregnant to collect welfare -- although I suspect some do. It's more a case of welfare lowering the cost of illegitimacy. I'd hope you have enough familiarity with supply & demand curves to know that any reduction in cost increases demand. Not that there is a "demand" for illegitimacy. But reducing the cost of any behavior generally increases the likelihood that it will occur. This is pretty basic stuff.

On a more practical note, one of the schools I attended was located in a housing project. At least half the kids were illegitimate and on welfare. So I have a good insight into the mentality. It's not so much the fact that girls say, "If I have another kid I can get more welfare." It's more a case of a pregnant couple not getting married so that they can claim welfare. And, yes, I have heard people say that.

A lot of times, the father actually hangs around for a while as part of a de facto common law marriage. Then, of course, unmarried couples are 6X more likely to split. So most really do end up as single mothers even though it started out as just a way to defraud the system.

Once single, the girls start looking for another guy to help them with the bills and play daddy to their kid. But they don't want to marry him either because they'd lose the welfare they're already getting. So its basically another de facto common law marriage.

They live together for a while defrauding the system. Eventually they decide to have a kid. But they're not ~really~ married so they eventually split up, too. Rinse and repeat a few times and that's how women on welfare end up with a string of baby daddies. Eventually illegitimacy becomes normative.

[LaPanache]

"I think it's sufficiently obvious that you do not WANT things "like eliminate birth-control or shame pre-marital sex policies" to work, whether they would work if implemented or not." -Severn.

Even if I want stigma free pre-marital sex with full access to reliable contraception, my arguments are invalid how? The fact that neither will welfare be eliminated in a country like the United States nor contraception be eradicated, still holds true. It doesn't matter how I feel about it.

With economic boom fueled by industrialization and abstract thought fueled by mass education come certain ideas that favor the freedom of the individual, and once these ideas have been embedded within every fiber of what a country stands for, it will be very very very improbable that they can be snatched away. In fact, as third world countries industrialize, they too begin to adopt lax values on birth control, sex, reproduction. It doesn't matter what my position on the "The Pill" are, it doesn't matter how you feel about "stigma-free sex", these things are going nowhere. The pendulum has swung and it has swung far enough to never swing back. Proposing this impossible swing-back to reduce single motherhood is therefore futile. That was the argument I was making.

[Φ]

Would you agree that I know more about the Christian Right than you do? As a former member?

I'm here to tell you that I'm not really sure what you and Sheila mean by "glorifying motherhood". We perhaps celebrate motherhood, and the work that goes into doing it well, but then so does the rest of the culture with the possible exception of certain strains of feminism. The celebration is pretty bipartisan.

It would be heavily ironic that the one social group that still preaches against it is blamed for encouraging it. Liberals and most feminists support abortion solely as an element of female empowerment. They haven't supported it as a cure for dysgenic fertility for a long time. On the contrary, they fully embrace bastardy as a lifestyle choice.

A more on-point criticism of the Christian Right is that, in the name of discouraging abortion, we have allowed ourselves to be intimidated by the Left into dismantling most social sanctions against bastardy once it's in progress.. This was a mistake, and a damned shame. But it's important to understand who's been pushing the culture in this direction, and it isn't the Christian Right.

[Matt W.]

The Christian Right really is f***ing stupid. They support poor people having kids and having them paid for on the taxpayers dime, they tend to support illegal immigration while at the same time disliking high-IQ immigrants because they tend not to be Christian, and certainly not the right kind of Christian.

Conservatism as I see it is essentially middle class values. The problem is that the middle class (roughly the 80th to 98th %ile) is too damn stupid to realize that they share interests neither with the top 1% nor with the bottom 50%.

[James K.]

"The reality is that women do not give up their babies for adoption."

This is a flawed statement. Yes, undoubtedly women who bring their babies to term often want to keep them. However, women who hate the idea of being a mother so much that they have the baby killed will, if the killing option is not available, likely want to give it up.

[HS: No, they won't. Women who have abortions view it as birth control and not as murder. Women see giving away a baby to a stranger as evil. Birth control is not considered evil.]