Can abortion rates be reduced organically?

[Phi for All]

I'm asking for a response from richard01, to see if they're posting in good faith on our discussion board. The evidence points elsewhere.

[StringJunky]

22 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I'm asking for a response from richard01, to see if they're posting in good faith on our discussion board. The evidence points elsewhere.

It's a copy-paste without attribution.

[Phi for All]

10 hours ago, richards01 said:

The reduction in abortion rates translates into a change in the projected lifetime prevalence of abortion from one in three women in the United States to one in four. Such a rapid reduction is of tremendous public health importance, and careful consideration of the causes of the decline is merited

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Moderator Note

We don't allow plagiarism at this forum. If you quote the work of someone else, you need to cite the source and give credit where it's due.

 

[CharonY]

17 hours ago, MSC said:

The improvement of the quality of life for lower income kids, from any place in the world, doesn't end at more contraception. It ends when the conditions for bringing children into the world are better, not so there are more or less, just so that people have more freedom to choose what it is they want to do. So women can choose a career and kids, or just a career and no kids, if that is what they want, so that dads and mothers stay in their kids lives and aren't forced to give them up because they couldn't afford the basics or because financial stressed tore apart a relationship or marriage. 

The confusing part to me is that you anchor this on the reduction on abortion, rather than (what it rather seems to be) making it easier to have kids. These are not the same. Folks do not have abortion because having children is hard. It is because they got pregnant and don't want to be for whatever reasons (including medical necessity). This includes folks who never want kids regardless of how easy or hard it is, but also other forms of unwanted pregnancies.  

Logically it would make much more sense (to me at least) to frame the question around improving family care and encouraging having kids and not on abortion prevention, especially as the latter is (as discussed here) not the main means of birth control.

The moment you look at abortion rates, you are looking at contraception rates. In your example, once you improve quality of life in low-income countries, birth rates go down. This does not happen magically, but rather it involves contraception. Improving the ability to have children still makes it a strategic decision (how many children, and when?) and again, the only realistic way to time it, is to use contraception. Again, if you do not want to have this discussion, it makes far more sense to frame it around promoting birth rather than preventing abortion. 

 

[MSC]

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

The confusing part to me is that you anchor this on the reduction on abortion, rather than (what it rather seems to be) making it easier to have kids. These are not the same. Folks do not have abortion because having children is hard. It is because they got pregnant and don't want to be for whatever reasons (including medical necessity). This includes folks who never want kids regardless of how easy or hard it is, but also other forms of unwanted pregnancies.  

Logically it would make much more sense (to me at least) to frame the question around improving family care and encouraging having kids and not on abortion prevention, especially as the latter is (as discussed here) not the main means of birth control.

The moment you look at abortion rates, you are looking at contraception rates. In your example, once you improve quality of life in low-income countries, birth rates go down. This does not happen magically, but rather it involves contraception. Improving the ability to have children still makes it a strategic decision (how many children, and when?) and again, the only realistic way to time it, is to use contraception. Again, if you do not want to have this discussion, it makes far more sense to frame it around promoting birth rather than preventing abortion. 

 

Noted! Although I'm mentioning both, the title of the thread can only be so long. Now I know which way to frame it that makes it easier to convince someone like yourself, but the reducing the abortion aspect is rhetoric targeting conservatives... I keep forgetting there don't seem to be many of those here, or they just don't frequent the ethics section..... ohhhh. That would explain a lot. 

6 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Logically it would make much more sense (to me at least) to frame the question around improving family care and encouraging having kids and not on abortion prevention, especially as the latter is (as discussed here) not the main means of birth control.

I understand your logic, but you need to understand mine, I don't put all my eggs into one basket. Why argue once framing it around one thing, when I can make multiple arguments with multiple elements in the frame? 

Side bar; have you ever read Cohens preface to logic?

[CharonY]

11 minutes ago, MSC said:

Why argue once framing it around one thing, when I can make multiple arguments with multiple elements in the frame? 

In OP it was actually framed it rather stringently with a heavy focus on abortion, which is the source of my confusion.

12 minutes ago, MSC said:

Side bar; have you ever read Cohens preface to logic?

I think in high school, in the broader context of objective relativism. But I have no real recollection anymore.

[iNow]

I agree with others here that contraception access and elimination of poverty are both core to achieving a reduced frequency of abortion, but I came to say EDUCATION itself is even more fundamental.

Not just sex education, either…

Education. Period. It helps solve all of the other referenced problems concurrently. 

[MSC]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

OP it was actually framed it rather stringently with a heavy focus on abortion, which is the source of my confusion.

True, next time I'll just lay it all out I guess, sometimes I prefer to just roll a ball to start a discussion instead of playing the entire game in the first move lol

 

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

think in high school, in the broader context of objective relativism. But I have no real recollection anymore.

Damn... wish I had went to your highschool lol

I don't have my copy handy, but I remember him talking about a scenario of a person jumping from a building and the event being witnessed by a physicist, a psychiatrist and a... might have been a surgeon, Dr? I can't quite recall, the gist was that logic is a tool, that in different experts will lead to different conclusions about what happened during an event. All of which can be true. The different accounts of logic, explaining a fuller context what happened in layers of detail that you can't get from one person. Objective relativism through context relativism. I wanna tie in Hume as well as Cohen. 

Now, Hume argued, that trying to reason with people, when people are primarily influenced by emotional sentiment, is the height of folly. People are convinced through sentiment, not reason. Accepting this about ourselves gives us an enormous amount of power. Learning how to think well is one thing, but Hume believed people also needed education on the emotions. Sometimes the reason we are able to get along with people we disagree with, is down to emotional correctness. 

So where the abortion issue is concerned... I guess my response is learn how to speak idiot to get some people on board with abortion being illegal, that ordinarily wouldn't, by using an emotional sentiment into it of getting a kind of win, and an ability to save face, deescalate. 

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, iNow said:

Education. Period. It helps solve all of the other referenced problems concurrently. 

I mean, ultimately it could, but if one manages to curb women's rights access to healthcare or venues of power, it might not actually solve the issue.

59 minutes ago, MSC said:

So where the abortion issue is concerned... I guess my response is learn how to speak idiot to get some people on board with abortion being illegal, that ordinarily wouldn't, by using an emotional sentiment into it of getting a kind of win, and an ability to save face, deescalate. 

It is rather difficult as the anti-abortion movement has many different facets. Some are plainly misinformed and at least on other emotional matters, direct engagement can help. But it requires time and effort.

Others use abortion to push different sentiments, there are misogynist streaks (which, to be clear is not only found in men) with sentiments ranging from punishing women to have sex, especially outside of marriage, to securing the role of women in society (i.e. as child bearers, rather than career professionals, for example). These are ideological stances and not one borne of logic, and are much harder to address as they are connected to ones perceived identity and worldview.

[MSC]

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

It is rather difficult as the anti-abortion movement has many different facets. Some are plainly misinformed and at least on other emotional matters, direct engagement can help. But it requires time and effort.

Difficult, challenging, thrilling, daunting. I'm game! 

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

Others use abortion to push different sentiments, there are misogynist streaks (which, to be clear is not only found in men) with sentiments ranging from punishing women to have sex, especially outside of marriage, to securing the role of women in society (i.e. as child bearers, rather than career professionals, for example). These are ideological stances and not one borne of logic, and are much harder to address as they are connected to ones perceived identity and worldview.

Yup, it's not even as cut and dry as political lines; religion, culture, community, family, hell even BDSM kind of throws a wrench into it... and then another one lol

 

4 hours ago, CharonY said:

mean, ultimately it could, but if one manages to curb women's rights access to healthcare or venues of power, it might not actually solve the issue.

True, a free education in how to live like a medieval peasant women is not what anyone reasonable wants. 😕