It's not just abortion restrictions, but also fetal protection laws, and fetal homicide laws.
Fetal homicide laws have been addressed
many times in previous threads and I won't bother rehashing the arguments. They only matter when a woman is killed, not when a woman seeks an abortion. Apples and oranges.
And all that matters is that Roe v Wade has not been overturned, nor will it be. All of the ancillary attempts don't really matter, because women can still get abortions at their own discretion. :shrug:
I am aware. I refuse to contribute to any prolife group that opposes contraception, including those associated with my own religion.
All pro-life groups are essentially the same in that they want to take away a woman's right, the only difference is the degree. You act as though you are separate from them, but even if your less severe ideology becomes law, the more radical members of the pro-life movement won't stop until full control is assured.
We can't give them this inch, or they will take a mile.
Not true. You're making a moral distinction whether you recognize it or not.
Governments don't take abortion policy nearly as seriously as they consider genocide and wartime policy to be. You can keep claiming it is en par to abortion policy, but it will never be true. Governments care much, much more about foreign campaigns to assure strategic and resource power than they do about the welfare of fetuses. I can appreciate your moral stance that abortion equates to widespread atrocity, but in realpolitik that is simply not the case. Even among conversatives in general, I'd imagine that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are bigger political fish to fry than abortion.
We can debate about the moral issue of abortion itself, but my undergrad was in international relations so trust me when I say I know public policy better than you.
It's not prochoice, regardless of the spin you put on it. A temperate and reasonable approach to the issue is possible by those that oppose abortion. I am not conceeding that abortion is right, just finding a better way to end it.
I'm not spinning it. You said that your strategy, instead of forcibly changing the laws now, would be to spread education and allow the public to change their minds over time. That is rather democratic, which means you are open to people exercising their choices. If the information you present is fair and balanced, then I don't see how giving people the freedom to form their own views can be anything but promoting their choices.
I mean, your hope may be that the info. changes people to pro-life, but if you're not forcing them into it, then it's ultimately pro-choice. It's not a spin to say so.
The laws in place against most drugs (save a few) are in place for societies benefit. Limiting overdose and the spread of disease for example. It's a bit ironic that you consider abortion good for humanity while ignoring the damage narcotics do to it.
I'm not getting into the debate about the war on drugs, but it has basically been a policy failure. In fact, it is en par to what abortion bans once were... hordes of people dying each year due to having to seek underground reliance, thugs controlling the supply and demand, and lack of safe access to medical facilities without incrimination if there are complications.
I am not in favour of laws that try to repress an already wide-spread behaviour, remove support services from it, and ruin people's lives. It is far more beneficial from a policy standpoint to decriminalize, and then address consequences as they occur. Abortion bans are only about negative consequences in many, many different areas. It too would be a policy failure, and you would see that if you could put aside your idealism for just a moment.
And the prochoice movement doesn't seem to care that over 1.5 million unborn children are killed every year in the us alone.
Calling them children is dishonest. Not even science calls a fetus a child.
The children needing adoption are made secondary by the innefficiences in government, not by the will of the prolife movement.
Inefficiencies which, if addressed, could also help children. If only there were more concerted efforts to do that. The pro-life does not really seem to care about born children or the socioeconomic damage to society that abortion bans would cause.
"Women dying in droves" is an appeal to emotion.
No it isn't. Not whatsoever. I will say it again: during abortion prohibition, the most common cause of death in women of reproduction age was medically unsafe abortions.
You continue, over and over again, to ignore this fact no matter how often I bring it up. You don't seem to care about the welfare of women, or the logical conclusion that if women die, fetuses die anyway.
In this day and age, illegal abortions would likely be far less risky than they were in the past
There is no way to prove this since it's hypothetical, but I sincerely doubt it. Given that women used things like coat hangers, household products, and various primitive implements to try and abort, I doubt that those practices would change. People are not medical experts. They think their bodies can take it, but they can't.
but again, abuse of the laws (were it to be illegal) is not in and of itself reason to change the laws.
Abortion laws have far more cons than they do pros, and it's all about ideology. It doesn't make any sense.
To you, I'm sure it doesn't. To me and the people I work with on this issue, it does.
Well, I'm sure glad that policy experts and people with a real understanding of the needs of society tend to be the ones who make the laws, and not "you and your people".
Despite what you may believe, ideology alone does not form laws. There are many other practical considerations. This is mainly why Roe v Wade has not been overturned, nor will it be if any rational arguments are involved. The pro-life movement has zero control over a woman's private life, and it's going to stay that way. You aren't medical experts, so, keep on dreaming.
