Posted on 01/20/2008 5:42:34 AM PST by Kaslin
The abortion debate has raged since 1973, when the Supreme Court gave abortion constitutional protection, but the basic law of the land has proved immutable. Abortion is legal, and it's going to remain legal for a long time.
Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things -- such as racial integration -- they once rejected. But sometimes, attitudes move in the opposite direction, as people see the consequences of the change. That's the case with abortion.
The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics. But maybe the chief reason is that the great majority of Americans, even many who see themselves as pro-choice, are deeply uncomfortable with it.
In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found 34 percent of Americans thought abortion "should be legal under any circumstances," with 13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only 26 percent said it should always be allowed, with 18 percent saying it should never be permitted.
Sentiments are even more negative among the group that might place the highest value on being able to escape an unwanted pregnancy: young people. In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is "morally wrong."
By now, pro-life groups know that outlawing most abortions is not a plausible aspiration. So they have adopted a two-pronged strategy. The first is to regulate it more closely -- with parental notification laws, informed consent requirements and a ban on partial-birth abortion. The second is to educate Americans with an eye toward changing "hearts and minds." In both, they have had considerable success.
Even those who insist Americans are solidly in favor of legal abortion implicitly acknowledge the widespread distaste. That's why the Democratic Party's 2004 platform omitted any mention of the issue, and why politicians who support abortion rights cloak them in euphemisms like "the right to choose."
But some abortion rights supporters admit reservations. It was a landmark moment in 1995 when the pro-choice author Naomi Wolf, writing in The New Republic magazine, declared that "the death of a fetus is a real death." She went on: "By refusing to look at abortion within a moral framework, we lose the millions of Americans who want to support abortion as a legal right but still need to condemn it as a moral iniquity."
The report on abortion rates from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the evolution of attitudes has transformed behavior. Since 1990, the number of abortions has dropped from 1.61 million to 1.21 million. The abortion rate among women of childbearing age has declined by 29 percent.
Those changes could be the result of other factors, such as more use of contraception: If fewer women get pregnant, fewer will resort to abortion. But the shift is equally marked among women who do get pregnant. In 1990, 30.4 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion. Last year, the figure was 22.4 percent.
Pro-choice groups say women are having fewer abortions only because abortion clinics are growing scarcer. But abortion clinics may be growing scarcer because of a decline in demand for their services and a public opinion climate that has gotten more inhospitable.
This growing aversion to abortion may be traced to better information. When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, most people had little understanding of fetal development. But the proliferation of ultrasound images from the womb, combined with the dissemination of facts by pro-life groups, has lifted the veil. In the new comedy "Juno," a pregnant 16-year-old heads for an abortion clinic, only to change her mind after a teenage protester tells her, "Your baby probably has a beating heart, you know. It can feel pain. And it has fingernails."
"Juno" has been faulted as a "fairy tale" that sugarcoats the realities of teen pregnancy. But if it's a fairy tale, that tells something about how abortion violates our most heartfelt ideals -- and those of our adolescent children. Try to imagine a fairy tale in which the heroine has an abortion and lives happily ever after.
The prevailing view used to be: Abortion may be evil, but it's necessary. Increasingly, the sentiment is: Abortion may be necessary, but it's evil.
Seems the point of the story is that contrary to what the Supreme Court of Fools might say most human beings find the above intuitively obvious. Who'd have thunk it.
“one in three 13 to 17 year olds think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.”
This is a group who know how close THEY came.
They have had siblings aborted and mothers who are “open and honest” and tell them about it.
I admit being addicted to Discovery Health. But I know there are a lot of women of all ages who are also. I can tell from the commercials who watches the shows about high risk pregnancies. They almost always show ultra shounds, the new 4 dimensional ones and often have the photo of the baby’s hand coming out the incision while the doctor is fixing the heart, removing the tumor or whatever. The more of that we see, the stronger the message of life in this culture.
This is a group who know how close THEY came.Have you ever been around liberals? This smacks of hysteria. I know many liberals, plenty of whom who have had abortions(and have told me about them). They would *never* tell their kids.
They have had siblings aborted and mothers who are “open and honest” and tell them about it.
There may also be a growing realization that this “population control” practice has also diminished the pool of citizens (and voters) who were to make up the next generation. As one of the unintended consequences, there has been an inrush of immigrants (legal and illegal) to fill this vacuum, to supply the workforce that was never born and grew to maturity.
And there was also the elimination of a large part of the pool of potential voters with certain biases. Those who would agree to abort a preterm infant, also shared a lot of other notions about freedom from the strictures of organized religion, and the perfectability of man. As the old believers died off, there was no cohort coming up to replace them, and their numbers inevitably shrank.
Parents who turn to abortion end up having no one to carry their genes, and their behavior patterns, into the next generation. A sort of social Darwinism.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Otherwise, TANSTAAFL.
Has Discovery Health ever shown any abortion procedure? I doubt it. Every other type of surgical procedure has been shown - except abortion. But there is no more hiding the truth, when every one now understands what they see in a 3- or 4-D ultrasound image.
I am old enough to have
actually taken the Hippocratic Oath
...
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art...
Doctors who do abortions are an abomination
The most vocal supporter of abortion that I personally know is a male. I have a feeling that at sometime in his past, he used abortion to get rid of an accidental pregnancy. It is almost a fanatical support of abortion. You don’t get that way by believing a a theory. He must have participated.
We are heading into some interesting times.
The most vocal supporter of abortion that I personally know is a male. I have a feeling that at sometime in his past, he used abortion to get rid of an accidental pregnancy. It is almost a fanatical support of abortion. You don’t get that way by believing a a theory. He must have participated.A male advocate for abortion is slime. I don't care about legality, but any man with a lick of sense knows how to use a raincoat. That guy obviously doesn't.
Most women that I’ve met that I’ve “deduced” have had abortions are vehemently pro-abort, some get hysterical when the “right” is questioned or threatened, and some just refuse to logically discuss the ethics of it.
I know one or two that have made it their life’s work to justify and promote abortion to justify their own “choice”.
The decrease in abortions is great news for Tuesday’s annual pro-life March On Washington.
Most women that I’ve met that I’ve “deduced” have had abortions are vehemently pro-abort, some get hysterical when the “right” is questioned or threatened, and some just refuse to logically discuss the ethics of it.Meh... let 'em weed themselves out of the gene pool. It's a self-eliminating problem.
I know one or two that have made it their life’s work to justify and promote abortion to justify their own “choice”.
I am only speculating on his motives but I keep coming up with the close call scenario. Nothing else makes sense.
btt
Sometimes raincoats fail. That is why any person having sex needs to be prepared to raise a child, even if they are “faithfully, responsibly” using birth control. EVERY birth control has a fail rate, including tubal ligation and vasectomy (their fail rate is about .2%, but still)
That is one reason why minors should not have sex. And why statutory rapists should be severely punished.
The success rate for condoms is 88%.
“I am only speculating on his motives but I keep coming up with the close call scenario. Nothing else makes sense.”
One of my good friends is like that. He’s mostly conservative, but he got some girl pregnant and college and they got rid of “the problem” so now he’s vehemently pro-choice. IMI, it’s as if to acknowledge the truth would be copping to a murder.
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