Educated Americans are pro-choice

This table, like the previous one, encompasses the years 2006-2010 and shows the respondants who say yes that a pregnant woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if "the woman wants it for any reason." As I point out again, the wording of this question makes Americans seem less pro-choice than they really are because repondants who think that abortion should generally be legal for most reasons (but not any) get grouped with the "no" respondants.

The correlation between education and pro-choice is even stronger than the correlation between income and pro-choice.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		ABANY
		1 YES	2 NO	ROW TOTAL
DEGREE	0: LT HIGH SCHOOL	24.8 161.6	75.2 488.9	100.0 650.6
	1: HIGH SCHOOL	38.4 876.3	61.6 1,404.9	100.0 2,281.3
	2: JUNIOR COLLEGE	41.0 148.2	59.0 213.1	100.0 361.3
	3: BACHELOR	50.7 385.1	49.3 374.1	100.0 759.3
	4: GRADUATE	60.3 255.8	39.7 168.5	100.0 424.3
	COL TOTAL	40.8 1,827.1	59.2 2,649.6	100.0 4,476.7

Comments

[Anon]

I was pro-choice until my wife got pregnant. At the 15 week ultrasound I was flabbergasted to see my unborn son roll over, move his arm across his face, and arch his back. I was overcome with the incredible realization that to go in and rip this little guy to shreds and flush his down the toilet would be an imaginable evil. He was human, and to kill him was murder. I stopped being pro-choice at that moment.

[HS: No, murder is the unlawful killing of a human. Because abortion is legal, it's by definition not murder, and furthermore there's not unanimous agreement that fetuses are fully human. Even some religious people don't think they have a soul yet.]

[Anon]

Oh beautiful, beautiful distinctions! Where would I be without you! If I couldn't invent the wonderful distinction between human and fully human I might have to accept conclusions I don't like. And we can't have that!

[T]

Anon, the problem with your stance is that it isn't selfish enough. You seem like a great guy. You're married and probably have a great family. Your son will inherit your great traits and go on to have a great family. It would be a horrible, horrible thing to have aborted your son. However it would also be horrible if you and your wife committed suicide. The world shouldn't be deprived of two wonderful people such as yourself.

I have taken the gene-centric view of evolution to heart. I view parents and their children not as separate people, but as multiple bodies maintaining overlapping genomes. Thus I believe in multigenerational guild. Since my child has 50% of my genome my child is thus 50% guilty of my sins, and vice versa. So if I were to kill my child, then I would be the victim, as would my wife. If we conspire to kill her then not only are we the perpetrators, but we are also the only victims. So if two parents together decide to kill their child I view it as suicide rather than murder. From an evolutionary standpoint this is clearly the case, I also believe that it is the case from a moral standpoint as well.

So while it would be wrong for you to commit suicide, would it really be wrong for a degenerate to commit suicide? I think that we'd all be happier if the scum of the earth committed suicide. Likewise while it would be wrong for you and your wife to collectively agree to abort your child, I think that we'd all be happier if the underclass aborted their babies.

So I think that from a strictly moral point of view as long as both parents agree there is nothing wrong with abortion. It is merely a form of suicide. If one parent disagrees then I would agree that it is a crime against him, equal to half of a murder.

That's from a purely moral perspective. From a more utilitarian perspective I think that the government should hand out free abortion vouchers like candy and open free sterilization clinics near schools where the students perform poorly on standardized tests, where they offer people $1000 cash to get sterilized.

Just remember that abortion isn't about aborting your baby. It is about aborting babies that would grow up to commit crimes against your family.

[Anon]

Wow, that is truly an insane argument. Surely you realize that a consequence of your argument is that a parent could kill their child when they're 1, 10, 20, or at any age and not be considered guilty of murder.

[T]

Yes I do realize that, and I don't see what the problem is. I'm in my 30s. If both my father and mother want to kill me, then society would be much better off with me dead. If my parents want to kill me then they are horrible people. Thus they have horrible DNA. Thus I have horrible DNA. Thus society would be better off with me dead.

If parents killing their children were legal, would you be scared? I wouldn't. My parents would never kill me. I don't see what the problem would be. The only people who would be killed are bad people.

There is nothing to be scared of, except yourself.

[anonymous]

@Anon: I know this is not necessarily what you meant but I do think it makes sense for there to be some circumstances, such as marriages in pregnancy, where an abortion should require the consent of both the mother and father. How is a man supposed to form a connection with an unborn child if the mother can just have an abortion any time? This goes double for the Peter Singer style plans where mother can kill their children even after birth.