Michael Specter: The danger of science denial

[Sloth]

Originally Posted by Nexxo

Sorry, no. It's her womb, so her decision.

This may seem unfair to you, but suck it up. Women are treated unfairly by men all the time. This happens to be one situation where they have the upper hand. Such is life.

But the baby is not her womb, it's an individual life with two parents. I don't mean to delve into the morality of abortions here by saying that, merely to say that I agree the mother makes the decisions and will ultimately call the shots since, yes, it is her body and she has the final say when it comes to matters regarding it but the very important decision to end the little life inside her shouldn't be closed to discussion. Consultation from her friends, family, religious figures if applicable are all acceptable. It's not their womb and it's not their child, but I'll be damned if they don't make an impact on the decision. A father, and possibly also fiance or husband, should be able to put in his input here.

[Nexxo]

That is down to the mother, no? Because she'd be the one holding the baby (literally) long after all those friends, family and religious figures have got on with their own lives, and if daddy dear decides that parenthood is a bit tougher than he had imagined it, it is usually he who walks out.

This is my major peeve with the Pro-Life movement: it is apparently constructive to wave placards outside abortion clinics and to spread emotive leaflets with images of aborted foetuses. It is OK to threaten the doctors and nurses working at those clinics, inform them of the fact that it is known where their kids go to school, and occasionally shoot a few or blow a few up. But once the child is born, you can't see those same people for dust. There are thousands of children living below the poverty line, abused and neglected. Orphanages and foster homes are full of disenfranchised kids who would have been better off not born. Where are those Pro-Lifers then?

Not protesting against underfunding of child social services? Not adopting those poor orphan kids? Heck no. It is so much more fun to persecute people over unborn babies. Because unborn babies are cute and innocent, see? They're like kittens, only more so. But nobody wants the abandoned mongrels at the kennel. Nobody wants to deal with reality. The mother has no choice: it is hard to run from reality when it grows in your belly and pushes its way out through your cervix.

[Krog_Mod]

Originally Posted by Nexxo

That is down to the mother, no? Because she'd be the one holding the baby (literally) long after all those friends, family and religious figures have got on with their own lives, and if daddy dear decides that parenthood is a bit tougher than he had imagined it, it is usually he who walks out.

This is my major peeve with the Pro-Life movement: it is apparently constructive to wave placards outside abortion clinics and to spread emotive leaflets with images of aborted foetuses. It is OK to threaten the doctors and nurses working at those clinics, inform them of the fact that it is known where their kids go to school, and occasionally shoot a few or blow a few up. But once the child is born, you can't see those same people for dust. There are thousands of children living below the poverty line, abused and neglected. Orphanages and foster homes are full of disenfranchised kids who would have been better off not born. Where are those Pro-Lifers then?

Not protesting against underfunding of child social services? Not adopting those poor orphan kids? Heck no. It is so much more fun to persecute people over unborn babies. Because unborn babies are cute and innocent, see? They're like kittens, only more so. But nobody wants the abandoned mongrels at the kennel. Nobody wants to deal with reality. The mother has no choice: it is hard to run from reality when it grows in your belly and pushes its way out through your cervix.

I'm pro life but i think that stuff is sick. I hate that. That's like the extremist christians who go around saying God hates fags. They're horrible hypocrites.

I do agree with both of you actually, but it is ultimately up to the mother whether or not she takes on the responsibility of carrying that child. I think it's irresponsible if they #1 have sex unprotected, and #2 Decide that because they don't want to raise or even just carry a "fetus" that it does not deserve to live. It's kind of disturbing to find that some sicko parents don't stop that sort of thinking when they actually have the child. There have been numerous stories over the years of people finding babies along the side of the road, in dumpsters, in boxes, in trash bins wrapped in plastic-wrap, just plain dropped off in the middle of nowhere and left to die. I know it's an extreme but to me abortion is just as sick and twisted. The only difference is that the baby isn't completely developed and you pay a doctor to kill the fetus instead.

It's astounding to me the level of responsibility people avoid anymore. If you chop your fingers off with a table saw, you can sue the table saw company for not providing a safer tool (this is happening to Ryobi right now). If you burn yourself on hot coffee from McDonalds you can sue them. A large part of it is greed, but the rest is just pure stupidity.

What you do has consequences, own up to them. If you use a table saw you may end up cutting yourself. If you're drinking hot coffee, you may get burnt. If you drink beer, you may get drunk; you may drive drunk and get in an accident and kill someone. What if you could sue Budweiser for causing you to get in an accident? If you have unprotected sex you may become pregnant. I don't think any amount of arguing, lawsuits, or laws should protect people from the consequences of their own actions.

[Krazeh]

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

I know it's an extreme but to me abortion is just as sick and twisted. The only difference is that the baby isn't completely developed and you pay a doctor to kill the fetus instead.

I think the fact the baby isn't completely developed is quite a significant difference when discussing the morality of ditching a baby by the side of the road, in dumpsters, trashbins etc vs abortion. I don't think it can be ignored that until certain points in a baby's development it is essentially nothing more than a collection of cells and, correct me if i'm wrong here, has no conciousness of it's own or indeed ability to survive outside the womb.

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

If you have unprotected sex you may become pregnant. I don't think any amount of arguing, lawsuits, or laws should protect people from the consequences of their own actions.

Are you saying that an abortion is a way to get out the consequence of getting pregnant through unprotected sex? Do you not think that having an abortion has an impact on the person involved? And in these cases where you don't think people should be having abortions what would you do with the child? Is it better for that child to live a life where it is unwanted/unloved than to have been aborted before it even had a conciousness of it's own?

[Nexxo]

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

I'm pro life but i think that stuff is sick. I hate that. That's like the extremist christians who go around saying God hates fags. They're horrible hypocrites.

They are a vocal minority. The real Pro-Lifers who disagree with abortion or euthanasia quietly go about their business in their local church communities, supporting young mothers and looking after the elderly and infirm. You don't hear of them --they are too busy looking after people to spend their time making a public fuss. Like the real animal right activists are too busy volunteering in kennels, feeding strays and mopping up their poo to go around threatening cleaners working at Cambridge Labs.

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

I do agree with both of you actually, but it is ultimately up to the mother whether or not she takes on the responsibility of carrying that child. I think it's irresponsible if they #1 have sex unprotected, and #2 Decide that because they don't want to raise or even just carry a "fetus" that it does not deserve to live. It's kind of disturbing to find that some sicko parents don't stop that sort of thinking when they actually have the child. There have been numerous stories over the years of people finding babies along the side of the road, in dumpsters, in boxes, in trash bins wrapped in plastic-wrap, just plain dropped off in the middle of nowhere and left to die. I know it's an extreme but to me abortion is just as sick and twisted. The only difference is that the baby isn't completely developed and you pay a doctor to kill the fetus instead.

It's astounding to me the level of responsibility people avoid anymore. If you chop your fingers off with a table saw, you can sue the table saw company for not providing a safer tool (this is happening to Ryobi right now). If you burn yourself on hot coffee from McDonalds you can sue them. A large part of it is greed, but the rest is just pure stupidity.

What you do has consequences, own up to them. If you use a table saw you may end up cutting yourself. If you're drinking hot coffee, you may get burnt. If you drink beer, you may get drunk; you may drive drunk and get in an accident and kill someone. What if you could sue Budweiser for causing you to get in an accident? If you have unprotected sex you may become pregnant. I don't think any amount of arguing, lawsuits, or laws should protect people from the consequences of their own actions.

I agree with you on that point, but there are two problems with it:

About 25% to 50% of pregnancies spontaneously abort in the sixth week. Often the woman thinks she just had a late period (this rate drops to 8% after that time period, with 2% miscarriages occuring between 8.5 weeks and birth). The limit of viability at which 50% of fetus/infants survive longterm is around 24 weeks, with moderate or major neurological disability dropping to 50% only by 26 weeks. So you can't really start thinking of a viable foetus until after 6 weeks in any case, and of a independent life until after week 24.

Even then, you have to weigh up a death caused by abortion before week 24 with a death caused by abandonment in a dustbin somewhere, or a death caused by sustained abuse and neglect. One is quick and painless (disregarding the debate on whether a foetus can feel pain, it is heavily anaesthetised as a routine part of the procedure); the others are slow, painful and messy.

Babies are dumped out of desperation, not callousness --the mothers feel that there is nowhere for them to go. Pregnancy out of wedlock carries a heavy stigma, ironically, exactly in those religious circles that claim to be Pro-Life. So where do children who are unwanted, or whose parent cannot look after them, end up? In the year ending 31 March 2008, a total of 59,500 children were looked after by local authorities in England, a rate of 54 per 10,000 children under 18 years. 71% are in foster care placements. The cost of care is £2.2 billion, with around £1.1 billion spent on foster care services and around £0.9 billion on children’s homes. This year government advisers warned that it is not nearly enough.

About 67% of looked after children have an identifiable mental health problem and they are more likely to have statements of Special Educational Needs compared to their non-looked after peers (30% compared to 2.5%). They are also 5 times as likely to be expelled from school and only 60% as likely to get any qualifications. Only 6% make it to higher education. They are 20% less likely to find employment later and twice as likely to have an offending record. In the US, an average 18-year old in foster care may have had up to 25 placements by the time they reach adulthood, and has a 50% chance of becoming homeless.

In short, they are not doing so well.

Then there is also this morsel of statistic that suggests that the sharp drop in crime that the 1990's saw in the US appears directly related to the Roe vs. Wade case, which determined in 1973 that abortion should be available on the national health. Suddenly, women in poor socio-economic circumstances had access to abortion. About 18 years later, we see a sharp drop in young-age related crime such as robbery and assault. Do the maths.

Now I'm not saying that justifies abortion, but I am saying that the Pro-Life lobby fails to realise that in true apocryphal style, once you have saved the life of an unborn baby you are, in effect, making yourself responsible for its life. Saving it from abortion is just the beginning. Now you have to keep it safe from everything else. Otherwise you are just an accomplice; just as guilty of the child abuse and neglect that follows.

[Krog_Mod]

Vocal minorities will still always end up making the whole of a group look stupid. lol

I don't know about the statistics of the rest of the world, but in the U.S.

"The overall miscarriage rate is reported as 15-20%, which means 15-20% of recognized pregnancies result in miscarriage. The frequency of spontaneous miscarriage increases further with maternal age. With the development of highly sensitive assays for hCG levels, pregnancies can be detected prior to the expected next period. When these highly sensitive hCG assays are used early, the magnitude of pregnancy loss significantly increases to about 60-70%. Late implantation by the conceptus beyond the usual 8-10 days after ovulation also has an increased risk of miscarriage.

About 80% of miscarriages occur within the first trimester. The frequency of miscarriage decreases with increasing gestational age. Recurrent miscarriage, defined as 2-3 pregnancy losses, affects about 1% of all couples."

Perhaps the 25-50% is out of all miscarriages as a whole? That number just doesn't seem right if we're saying a quarter to half of all pregnancies result in a miscarriage.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the Limit of Viability means that if a baby is born before the 24 week gestation period it has a 50% chance to live (long term outside of the womb). So if it stays in the womb and there are no complications, it should be fine. Personally, I don't see how that carries merit into a discussion on abortion. I know it's a major point, but I personally just don't agree with how it's always presented. It's always seemed like they're saying "Because it can't live on its own it's alright to kill it."

For anyone wondering: 24 weeks = 6 months.
I almost hate to post this picture because it's almost like the shock crap the extremists pull. But it's the opposite. Cute shock: It's like pouring a box of kittens on someone. This is what they look like.


I don't really buy into the idea that a baby is ever really self-sustaining (yes a bit of a jump from viability). Parents have to feed it, take care of it, clean it, keep it safe. The only thing that is making it viable is that it can now breathe on it's own.

In the same aspect adults are much like this, we can breathe, eat, drink, walk, and talk on our own; but we end up being dependent on others anyway. A lot of that dependency is by choice. We have the ability to take care of our needs but it's easier to pay a water company to bring water into our house or to pay the grocers/farmers/butchers to supply us with food for us to eat. There's a whole emotional/mental aspect to us too where we need other people around us for our minds to develop and function properly. Take away all the people in someones life and they start getting pretty crazy. I think there's a really fine line for what an individual really is and I think we're all in some way, shape, or form, dependent on each other.

I can't argue against the facts about the foster system. I think the whole thing sucks. It does have a tendency to churn out some bad kids, but it does also churn out some healthy, great people. You can't really bunch them up and say they're all bad. Nor, like you said, does it mean that abortion is the right answer to that problem. The foster care system just needs some good loving people and not a bunch of people out for the money. It's especially worse in 3rd world countries where some are sold off to become prostitutes. The whole system just freaking sucks and I'd bet my life that a lot of the kids in it say they wish they'd never been born. Then we have all our freaking Hollywood stars going overseas and adopting "exotic" babies.. like they're collecting one from each country when there are plenty of children here that need adopted. I personally would like to adopt a child when I'm ready, probably after I've had a child of my own.

Originally Posted by Nexxo

Now I'm not saying that justifies abortion, but I am saying that the Pro-Life lobby fails to realise that in true apocryphal style, once you have saved the life of an unborn baby you are, in effect, making yourself responsible for its life. Saving it from abortion is just the beginning. Now you have to keep it safe from everything else. Otherwise you are just an accomplice; just as guilty of the child abuse and neglect that follows.

Harsh but completely true. I think the aim of Pro-Life shouldn't really be to make it illegal. Those who can't deal with the responsibility of a child or don't want to.. will find a way out of it. But if there were a better way out of that for them, say they could have the child and know that people would care for the child in a loving way rather than just handing it over to the foster system or abortion. I think the number of abortions would go down a ton. No amount of lawmaking could really stop an abortion if someone thought that was their only way out. Iron Fist (laws) vs Open Arms (something like a locally run, volunteer, foster care; most likely would be staffed by people who genuinely love children).

Whether I'm right or wrong doesn't really carry much weight. Having sex is analogous to giving that power of choice to the woman. Whether or not it's legal, that baby is at her mercy. So I do think what you originally said still heavily applies.

Originally Posted by Nexxo

Frankly, the most important and effective contribution to such decision making a father can (and should) make is to mind where he sticks his dick.

[Nexxo]

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

I don't know about the statistics of the rest of the world, but in the U.S. "The overall miscarriage rate is reported as 15-20%, which means 15-20% of recognized pregnancies result in miscarriage. The frequency of spontaneous miscarriage increases further with maternal age. With the development of highly sensitive assays for hCG levels, pregnancies can be detected prior to the expected next period. When these highly sensitive hCG assays are used early, the magnitude of pregnancy loss significantly increases to about 60-70%. Late implantation by the conceptus beyond the usual 8-10 days after ovulation also has an increased risk of miscarriage.

About 80% of miscarriages occur within the first trimester. The frequency of miscarriage decreases with increasing gestational age. Recurrent miscarriage, defined as 2-3 pregnancy losses, affects about 1% of all couples."

Perhaps the 25-50% is out of all miscarriages as a whole? That number just doesn't seem right if we're saying a quarter to half of all pregnancies result in a miscarriage.

Many of them would not qualify as 'miscarriage' as such. They happen within the first 6 weeks and may be mistaken for a skipped or late period.

You are right that viability outside the womb is not a valid criteria for setting the limit on abortion as such, but the question is: at what point do we stop talking about a foetus and start talking about a baby? Some Pro-Lifers would argue the special status of an embryo that has less awareness and central nervous system complexity than my pet rats, who they'd happily put down as vermin, or pigs (who are brighter than dogs, and genetically pretty close to human), who'd they happily turn into sausage meat.

Fine, if that is the way they feel about it. But the consequence is that each miscarriage should be treated the full consideration of a child bereavement. And ironically, it is again religious institutions that have been most callous in that regard, dismissing miscarriages and even still births as inconsequential or even almost as something to be ashamed of (although that has luckily changed over the last 40 years) and in case of the Catholic Church, debating (until the Pope settled this in 2007) whether they can be baptised or not and go to Heaven or not.

Of course, that does not change what happens once the baby is born...

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

I can't argue against the facts about the foster system. I think the whole thing sucks. It does have a tendency to churn out some bad kids, but it does also churn out some healthy, great people. You can't really bunch them up and say they're all bad.

I'm not saying that they're all bad. I'm saying that the evidence shows that foster care and care homes are a poor substitute for growing up in a healthy, loving family of your own. I'm also saying that if Pro-Life people value human life as they say they do, they've got their work cut out for them right there.

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

Nor, like you said, does it mean that abortion is the right answer to that problem. The foster care system just needs some good loving people and not a bunch of people out for the money. It's especially worse in 3rd world countries where some are sold off to become prostitutes. The whole system just freaking sucks and I'd bet my life that a lot of the kids in it say they wish they'd never been born. Then we have all our freaking Hollywood stars going overseas and adopting "exotic" babies.. like they're collecting one from each country when there are plenty of children here that need adopted. I personally would like to adopt a child when I'm ready, probably after I've had a child of my own.

Abortion is not the right answer. But the sad state of affairs is that right now, it beats the alternative. And that's where the crux of the matter lies... Pro-Lifers should not be looking to outlaw abortion: they should be offering a better alternative. Especially as they are in the unique position to do so: experienced parents, strong family values, a tight-knit community.

Originally Posted by Krog_Mod

Harsh but completely true. I think the aim of Pro-Life shouldn't really be to make it illegal. Those who can't deal with the responsibility of a child or don't want to.. will find a way out of it. But if there were a better way out of that for them, say they could have the child and know that people would care for the child in a loving way rather than just handing it over to the foster system or abortion. I think the number of abortions would go down a ton. No amount of lawmaking could really stop an abortion if someone thought that was their only way out. Iron Fist (laws) vs Open Arms (something like a locally run, volunteer, foster care; most likely would be staffed by people who genuinely love children).

Moreover, the number of child abandonments would go down a ton. Someone who finds herself in the sudden undesired position of motherhood is more likely to be prepared (and able) to deal with it well if she knows that there is a good system of caring, supportive people backing her up.

But again: religious institutions tend to ostracise women who get pregnant out of wedlock. Then they block their only way out of that situation. Then they abandon them and their newborn to their fate. The problem with religious people is that they keep looking up for the answers, while they should be looking inside themselves.

[Krog_Mod]

*nods in agreement*