GrumpyGOP, when a woman gets pregnant and endures emotional and physical agony, social alienation, has to take leave, etc...she loses many opportunities that the man doesn't lose. This is unequal in my opinion. And it can be changed. And it should.

8/8/2005 3:38:08 AM

^Yes, it is, as are a litany of other things that I have listed in this thread, with regards to the sexes, races, whatever. There are lots of inequalities in life. They have to be dealt with through means other than "Killing the remainder on one side of the equation"

Quote :

"it's a pretty common theory, isn't it?"

You know what else is pretty common? The belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Also the belief that marriage can be between any two consenting adults. They can't both be right. Hmmm, what does that mean?

Maybe that something's being "a pretty common theory" doesn't amount to jack shit?

Well there's a crazy idea.

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 3:40 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2005 3:38:37 AM

women can get abortions but men cant?


i demand to have my right to get an abortion.

8/8/2005 3:38:40 AM

I would think that it's unquestionable that birth control has given women more freedom

and abortion goes along with that... those millions of kids would be bogging many ladies down without abortion

of course, obviously killing people for a little more freedom isn't the best trade

but many don't consider it murder, obviously

8/8/2005 3:38:41 AM

if men and women should be equal, then they have equal say

if the man wants to keep the baby, what will you do then?

pull the same bullshit..."its my body and I'll do what I want to"

8/8/2005 3:40:58 AM

Quote :

"of course, obviously killing people for a little more freedom isn't the best trade"

I've yet to see her respond to that, mainly because she can't.

Quote :

"I would think that it's unquestionable that birth control has given women more freedom"

It's given us more freedom, too. Back when women wouldn't fuck all the time because there was no way to avoid pregnancy, men didn't get to fuck as much as they do now.

8/8/2005 3:41:56 AM

Quote :

"Maybe that something's being "a pretty common theory" doesn't amount to jack shit?"

I guess I was imagining the surprise I detected then...

it least call it the standard feminist bullshit or some such

8/8/2005 3:42:54 AM

i still say, after time and time again

dont fuck around if you cannot deal with the consequences it can bring

8/8/2005 3:43:47 AM

GrumpyGOP, I'm not responding to that because Kris has been arguing with you about zygotes and biology for the first five pages of this thread. Here's a thought though: if a brainless, heartless clump of cells is a living member of the human race, where should we define death? Is a brain-dead, heart beatless man alive simply because he is made up of cells that contain human DNA?

8/8/2005 3:45:16 AM

^I mean, I guess if you want to ignore any concept of "life" that has ever existed, that would be fine.

Regardless of whether or not it is human, a zygote or fetus is comprised of cells that are alive.

Some people can do better than me on tests even though they have to study less. It is unfair to me that I lose opportunities by wasting so much extra time studying, and then by having a lower grade. I demand the right to cheat to make myself equal to my intellectual superiors.

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 3:46 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2005 3:45:16 AM

Quote :

"It's given us more freedom, too. Back when women wouldn't fuck all the time because there was no way to avoid pregnancy, men didn't get to fuck as much as they do now."

Absolutely. But as the kid pops out of the woman and she generally does more to directly take care of it, it's helped females a bit more than it's helped males...

8/8/2005 3:45:47 AM

Well then let me see laws requiring men to contribute more equally to child-rearing. I wouldnt' love 'em, but they'd at least be consistent with what she purports to be trying to do.

8/8/2005 3:46:58 AM

Quote :

"Regardless of whether or not it is human, a zygote or fetus is comprised of cells that are alive."

Define alive.

8/8/2005 3:47:46 AM

we live in a society where blaming others for our own mistakes is commonplace

I dont want this kid, so I'm gonna say that the man is gonna keep me down if I decide to keep it, therefore, I should, I must get ahead of the game by having an abortion.

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 3:49 AM. Reason : afafa]

8/8/2005 3:48:46 AM

That is a tangent with no relevance. There are very clear differences that separate the cells of a zygote from a dead man, and you know full bloody well what they are.

8/8/2005 3:49:30 AM

I havent seen much talk of the other side of this fucking equation.

What if the other half wants to keep the baby? What would you do then?

8/8/2005 3:51:45 AM

it's a good idea to be clear about such things before ya have sex in the first place

8/8/2005 3:52:31 AM

BUT THAT WOULD BE UNFAIR TO PEOPLE WHO LACK FORESIGHT!!

Fuck this, I'm going to bed.

8/8/2005 3:53:14 AM

smart man

8/8/2005 3:54:45 AM

rumfel, if a woman is using birth control and gets pregnant anyway, I'd be torn in that situation. Otherwise, it seems clear that the man should have a say.

8/8/2005 3:56:08 AM

So who wants to fuck?

8/8/2005 3:59:35 AM

lets go

8/8/2005 4:02:35 AM

i guess everybody's gone home for the night

8/8/2005 4:06:39 AM

I quit smoking pot about a week ago since it's been so dry. My sleep got off-track as a result. Now here I am.

8/8/2005 4:10:29 AM

cool...stay off the pot if you can

i had a friend quit after a long period of much smoking, and she felt so much better after she quit
now if i can just get her to quit smoking cigs...

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 4:12 AM. Reason : afafaa]

8/8/2005 4:12:15 AM

I'm not a girl, I'm a guy you know. But at the same time, I tell ya how you can solve this abortion issue right now. Ready? Those unwanted babies that single moms leave in alleys and in dumpsters? Leave about 12 of those on the steps of The Supreme Court. This is over. Like that. "You guys said we had to have them? Then you guys...FUCKING RAISE 'EM." "Raise 'em then, you fucking fucking raise 'em. YOU raise 'em. You said I had to have it? Then it's yours. Fuck. It's yours..Take it"

Bill Hicks

8/8/2005 6:47:25 AM

^ OMG SUPREME COURT! YOU SAID I HAVE TO PAY TAXES, YOU FUCKING PAY THEM. I'M NOT GOING TO DO IT YOU SAID I HAVE TO. YOU FUCKING PAY MY TAXES.

shut the fuck up. that is the worst argument ever.

8/8/2005 8:25:32 AM

Quote :

"^I mean, I guess if you want to ignore any concept of "life" that has ever existed, that would be fine. Regardless of whether or not it is human, a zygote or fetus is comprised of cells that are alive."

Umm... my skin cells are alive, but if I snip off a chunk of my skin, no one really cares. Dentists routinely carve away small pieces of skin when they are putting in a new filling (at least my dentist does). Cancer is composed of living cells, yet we nuke them to death all the time.

Quote :

"Some people can do better than me on tests even though they have to study less. It is unfair to me that I lose opportunities by wasting so much extra time studying, and then by having a lower grade. I demand the right to cheat to make myself equal to my intellectual superiors. "

I believe you can achieve something similar by classifying yourself as having a disability, but you have to talk to the health center about that...

8/8/2005 10:15:40 AM

potpot

you arent solving anything with your argument. that still is not taking responsibility for the chances that you took while having se x

8/8/2005 10:24:31 AM

Quote :

"When they interact, they make a zygote"

Great, but irrelevant, the point is that they can interact. The outcome of their interaction is irrelevant.

Quote :

"Cell 1 is not a person and it is not its own organism, it is part of a zygote, a person, an organism."

Eaxctly, a sperm is a part of an organism, it and an egg are an organism. It doesn't matter how many cells that organism has.

Quote :

"You're still contradicting yourself, but at this point I've tried at least a half-dozen times to clarify the situation"

IVE SAID IT A THOUSAND TIMES. HOW CAN I MAKE IT MORE CLEAR. You are trying to get me in a circular arguement.

8/8/2005 11:13:05 AM

^^The point he is trying to make is, you can't force people act responsibly. Making them have a child that they don't want isn't going to make people start acting responsibly. It is going to make them have a child that they don't want. I assume that a child that isn't even wanted isn't going to be cared for the same way that a child being born into a home where they are wanted.

I don't see how it's elitist or egomaniacal to say that outlawing abortions would put many children in bad situations. Here is my reasoning for this.
1) The child is being born into a home where he/she isn't even wanted to begin with.
2) The people who are most likely to get abortions are a) unwed, b) very young, c) uneducated d) have no income earning potential.
3) Statistics have shown that the the crime rate in this nation has dropped as a result of legalizing abortion.

Well we can see that the child isn't off to the greatest start here. Do some people come from situations like this and turn things around? I'm sure. But that doesn't change the fact that the people who are going to ultimately pay for outlawing abortion are the kids that are forced to be born, and society.

8/8/2005 12:08:06 PM

#3... no they haven't... that's pure conjecture from the authors of Freakonomics.

There is no way to prove a caused b, outside of pure circumstance, without any semblance of evidence.

8/8/2005 12:29:13 PM

Pure conjecture? Hardly. I think that it is very likely that the two have a causal relationship. They didn't just come up with that premise out of the blue. I thought that their supporting evidece was pretty convincing.

8/8/2005 12:35:10 PM

the people that I have known to have abortions were very educated

the fucking person that made this thread espouses herself to be educated, and she would have an abortion at the drop of a dime

your argument is purely stereotypical

8/8/2005 12:39:53 PM

^^ Go back and reread.

The experts that said that the crime dropped in the 1990s said that it was due to the economy, or due to welfare reform, or due to better prison policy.

The authors criticize the experts were drawing a relationship between crime and the economy saying that just because event a and event b coincide doesn't mean that a caused b.

Then they do the same thing they criticize by drawing a relationship between roe v. wade and crime going down.

I had to laugh at their audacity to do that. I finished the book but I lost respect after they did that.

And it is pure conjecture when they say, roe stopped people from having babies that would commit crimes, therefore crime went down. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THAT (i.e. conjecture).

And it is further conjecture when you say "I think that it is very likely that the two have a causal relationship." For it to become fact, you have to say I KNOW that the two have a relationship, which no one is able to do.

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 12:47 PM. Reason : .]

8/8/2005 12:43:47 PM

Just for good measure:

conjecture: # Inference or judgment based on inconclusive or incomplete evidence; guesswork.

8/8/2005 12:55:12 PM

Quote :

"the people that I have known to have abortions were very educated"

Anecdotal. I will admit that there is a stereotype about people who have abortions. I am interested to see if there is any current data that shows who gets abortions (there probably isn't due to privacy laws).

Yes, I know what the definition of conjecture is, and I didn't think that their hypothesis was purely guesswork. They did have other reasons for coming to that conclusion, such as other countries that have exhibited the same patterns, states that legalized abortion before the federal law went into effect experienced commensurate drops in crime before the rest of the country, etc. I don't see how you could ignore those studies.

8/8/2005 2:15:33 PM

Edited for length; full article here: http://www.amconmag.com/2005_05_09/feature.html

Quote :

"Pre-emptive Executions? The notion that legalizing abortion drives down crime rates is logically flawed and morally repugnant. by Steve Sailer Did legalizing abortion in the early ’70s reduce crime in the late ’90s by allowing “pre-emptive capital punishment” of potential troublemakers? Or did the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, by outmoding shotgun weddings, adoption, and respect for life, instead make more murderous the early ’90s crack wars fought by the first generation of youths to survive legalized abortion? Since 1999, the University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt has been pushing his theory that legal abortion is responsible for half of the recent fall in crime. This assertion is the most prominent element in Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, the entertaining new book Levitt co-wrote with journalist Stephen J. Dubner. ... The theory that legalizing abortion cuts crime is hardly original to Levitt, but it has long been more whispered than printed. Levitt’s hypothesis embarrasses pro-choicers, who don’t want public discussion of how quite a few people, from crusading eugenicist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger onward, have backed fertility control as a way to limit “undesirables.” Since blacks undergo about three times as many abortions as whites per capita, white liberals realize that endorsing Levitt’s reasoning could be politically disastrous. Levitt’s idea also outrages pro-lifers, who note that King Herod used similar logic in ordering the slaughter of thousands of babies to try to eliminate the threat posed by the infant Jesus. ... Levitt’s theory rests on two plausible-sounding statements. First, he claims that abortion lowers the number of “unwanted” babies, who would be more likely to commit crimes someday. Second, crime did fall. Levitt writes, “In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years—the years during which young men enter their criminal prime—the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals.” Although Levitt’s research has been praised by normally hardheaded gentlemen such as George Will and Robert Samuelson, few have probed its statistical complexities. Overall crime-trend data are frequently questionable. For example, the city of Atlanta long understated crime to attract the 1996 Olympics. The FBI’s homicide statistics, however, are more trustworthy because, as Arthur Miller might have said, attention must be paid to a dead body with a hole in it. According to Levitt’s logic, murder should have declined first among the youngest and last among the oldest. Did it? Unfortunately for Levitt, the opposite is true. The murder rate for Americans age 25 and over started falling way back in 1981 (when the youngest person in this cohort was born in 1956) and fell fairly steadily for two decades. Indeed, in contrast to his theory about post-Roe individuals being especially law-abiding, the adult murder rate has only begun to creep back up now that people born after Roe have begun to make up a noticeable fraction of those 25 and up. From 1999 through 2002 (the latest year available, when a 25-year-old would have been born four years after Roe), the murder rate among 25- to 34-year-olds has risen 17 percent, while continuing to drop among the under-25s. But the acid test of Levitt’s theory is this: did the first New, Improved Generation culled by legalized abortion actually grow up to be more lawful teenagers than the last generation born before legalization? Hardly. Instead, the first cohort to survive legalized abortion went on the worst youth murder spree in American history. Abortion became legal in 1970 in California, New York, and three smaller states. Let’s compare the murder rate of 14- to 17-year-olds in 1983 (who were born in the last pre-legalization years of 1965-1969) with that of 14- to 17-year-olds a decade later in 1993 (who were born in the high-abortion years of 1975-1979). Was this post-Roe cohort better behaved than their pre-legalization elders? Not exactly. Their murder rate was 3.1 times worse. In contrast, 18- to 24-year-olds in 1993—some born before legalization, some after—committed 86 percent more murders than a decade earlier, while people 25 and up—all born before legalization—were 18 percent less lethal. Back in 1983, 14- to 17-year-olds were barely more than half as likely as 25- to 34-year-olds to kill. In 1993 and 1994, however, this purportedly better-bred generation of juveniles was more than twice as deadly as 25- to 34-year-olds. Although Levitt desperately wants to avoid talking about race in relation to abortion and crime, blacks make an ideal test case for his theory because, as Levitt himself has noted, black women have about triple the number of abortions per capita as white women. So Levitt’s theory suggests that black teens should have “benefited” more than whites from abortion. Instead, black 14- to 17-year-olds were an apocalyptic 4.4 times more murderous in 1993 than a decade earlier. The black-white teen murder ratio grew from five times worse in 1983 to 11 times worse in 1993, according to the FBI. The embarrassing truth, as Levitt admitted to me when I debated him on Slate.com in 1999, is that when he dreamed up his theory with John J. Donohue, he looked at crime rates in 1985 and 1997 and paid little attention to the vast crack epidemic that laid waste to urban America in between. It makes no sense to credit abortion for any subsequent improvement in the behavior of the first post-Roe generation, when abortion so dismally failed to keep them on the straight and narrow when they were juveniles. Instead, the most obvious explanation for the ups and downs of the murder rate is the ups and downs of the crack business. This generation born right after legalization is better behaved today in part because so many of its bad apples are now confined to prisons, wheelchairs, and coffins. About two million people are now in jail, four times more than in 1972. (Levitt attributes roughly one-third of the recent fall in crime to increased incarceration.) The leaders in the decline in murder in the later 1990s were black male 14- to 17-year-olds, who by 1998 were killing at less than one-third the rate of their older brothers just five years earlier. These African-American kids born in the early ’80s survived abortion levels similar to those faced by the crime-ridden 1975-79 generation, but seeing their big brothers gunned down in drive-by shootings may have scared them straight. ... For example, he argues that crime fell first in the five states that legalized abortion back in 1970. Okay, but isn’t it at least as interesting that crime had previously gone up first in those early legalizing states? And hardly surprising it then burned out there first? Indeed, there is at least as much evidence that legalizing abortion increased homicide. As Levitt acknowledged to me in 1999, “[T]he high abortion places like New York and California tended to have a bigger crack problem, and tended to have crack arrive earlier.” In other words, the two big urban areas that were the first to enjoy the purported crime-fighting benefits of legalized abortion in 1970, New York City and Los Angeles, were also the ground zeroes of the teen murder rampage that began, perhaps not coincidentally, about 16 years later. From NYC and LA, gangsta rap (such as NWA’s landmark 1988 album “Straight Outta Compton,” featuring “F*** Tha Police”) glamorously spread the crack-dealer’s credo to the hinterlands. ... Still, the social effects of abortion demand closer study. Although Levitt claims that legalized abortion should have improved the conditions under which children were raised, it made adoption rare. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported, “Before 1973 about one in five premarital births to white women were relinquished for adoption. By the mid-1980’s (1982–88), this proportion fell to 1 in 30.” Even worse, the national illegitimacy rate soared, from 12 percent in 1972 to 34 percent in 2002. The growth didn’t begin to slow until the mid-1990s, when the abortion rate declined... Why did the abortion rate and the illegitimacy rate both skyrocket during the ‘70s? Isn’t abortion supposed to cut illegitimacy? Roe largely finished off the traditional shotgun wedding by persuading the impregnating boyfriend that he had no moral duty to make an honest woman of his girlfriend since she could get an abortion. The CDC noted, “Among women aged 15–29 years conceiving a first birth before marriage during 1970–74, nearly half (49 percent) married before the child was born. By 1975–79 the proportion marrying before the birth of the child fell to 32 percent, and it has declined to 23 percent in 1990–94.” The most striking fact about legalized abortion, but also the least discussed, is its pointlessness. Levitt himself notes that following Roe, “Conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent …” So for every six fetuses aborted in the 1970s, five would never have been conceived except for Roe! This ratio makes a sick joke out of Levitt’s assumption that legalization made a significant difference in how “wanted” children were. Indeed, perhaps the increase in the number of women who got pregnant figuring they would get an abortion but then were too drunk or drugged or distracted to get to the clinic has meant that the “wantedness” of surviving babies has declined. ... "

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 8:08 PM. Reason : Moo]

8/8/2005 8:07:47 PM

Quote :

"Umm... my skin cells are alive, but if I snip off a chunk of my skin, no one really cares. Dentists routinely carve away small pieces of skin when they are putting in a new filling (at least my dentist does). Cancer is composed of living cells, yet we nuke them to death all the time. "

Those are your own cells with your own DNA in them and they will never become a new individual person. Zygotes are different because they are an entity separate and humanly individual from the mother and everyone else. They are new LIFE, life which will likely come to term (barring some interference) and could be your neighbor, cousin, friend, the president, a crackhead, tyrant, or whatever. The point is that they will be an individual just like you and they have the right to have the same chance that we were all given.

[Edited on August 8, 2005 at 8:13 PM. Reason : Moo]

8/8/2005 8:10:35 PM

I like how your arguments are emotional crybaby bullshit and photos with lots of shock value.

which is about par for the fucking course.

8/8/2005 8:15:24 PM

Quote :

"Those are your own cells with your own DNA in them and they will never become a new individual person."

Cloning.

8/8/2005 8:51:41 PM

Quote :

"emotional crybaby bullshit"

I'm not being emotional... and please elaborate on how what I've said is 'bullshit.'

???

8/8/2005 9:07:06 PM

Quote :

"Cloning."

Oh, are we cloning people now?

Nevermind, let me edit my original statement...

"Those are your own cells with your own DNA in them and they will never become a new individual person on their own."

My point remains the same; a zygote's cells are different from other cells in the mother's body because a zygote is genetically different and its cells split to form another person, not just more of the mother's skin or other tissue.

8/8/2005 9:12:50 PM

Quote :

""Those are your own cells with your own DNA in them and they will never become a new individual person on their own." "

You can not make a claim like that. Consider the biochemistry of an individual cell and how it replicates. Celluar DNA is copied and a new cell is split from the old cell which a 99.99% exact copy of the DNA. Does new life come from this? Yeah, an entirely new cell is created. DNA is a map, thats it.

Quote :

"My point remains the same; a zygote's cells are different from other cells in the mother's body because a zygote is genetically different and its cells split to form another person, not just more of the mother's skin or other tissue."

The cells in a mitochondria are different from those in the nucleus, even to the point of having different types of DNA. Do we consider those organells different? No, they are part of the whole cell.

There are thousands of different DNA in our body considering the amount of bacteria and organisms that live in it.

8/8/2005 9:36:06 PM

Quote :

"Those are your own cells with your own DNA in them and they will never become a new individual person. Zygotes are different because they are an entity separate and humanly individual from the mother and everyone else. They are new LIFE, life which will likely come to term (barring some interference) and could be your neighbor, cousin, friend, the president, a crackhead, tyrant, or whatever. The point is that they will be an individual just like you and they have the right to have the same chance that we were all given. "

That IS the point, isn't it? So you're saying that at that stage, they are not yet an individual. Have you seen Minority Report before?

8/8/2005 9:38:11 PM

Quote :

"Have you seen Minority Report before?"

Yeah, and I thought that it was a pretty fucking stupid movie.

What about it?

8/8/2005 9:44:25 PM

Stuff about the future and stuff.

8/8/2005 10:01:28 PM

This thread makes me wish I could get like ten abortions.

8/8/2005 11:16:45 PM

^ And keep them in jars in your basement? So when your future kids misbehave, you can say "see, I could have aborted you!"?

8/8/2005 11:21:57 PM

I'm going to have my first abortion stuffed and mounted over my fireplace.

8/8/2005 11:51:09 PM