This is going to be quick and dirty since I have to get my ass to bed so I can get up for work.
Two reputable sociological studies have actually found that crime rates are lower in areas where access to abortion services is (1) readily available and (2) legal.
Please show me the evidence and statistics. Also show me a direct correlation between that and a country where abortion is illegal.
I can't link directly to the study for copyright reasons. If you have a subscription to eJournals, this brief summary should give you the reference information you need. http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/990812/abortion.shtml
The study was undertaken using data from the United States around and after the 1973 Roe Vs Wade decision. That should prove satisfactory for your needs. To my knowledge, it has not been performed elsewhere.
Social conditions are also better in those jurisdictions. Why? Because the vast majority of unwanted children who are born are never actually given up for adoption (for a variety of reasons). Instead, they are raised by families unable or unwilling to care for them.
What are these reasons. Please state.
Is it the grandparents or other parents raise the child rather than see it destroyed by abortion?
Access to adoption services can be quite limited; mothers who carry a child to term often choose to keep it believing they may be able to support it even if they can't; familiar pressure prevents adoption; etc.
That correlates directly with involvement in criminal activity (it's not causal, it's correlative). It also costs the social support system a fortune in resources dedicated to crime prevention, drug and alcohol abuse prevention and treatment, subsidized housing, anti-homelessness programs, etc.
This could occur in any number of different environments, it is too simplistic to state that it is merely down to being adopted. Can you take into account the social area to which the child is born, the background, the family lifestlye?
Drugs problems, crime hot spots generally take place within areas of civil unrest, social disorder or economic turbulance.
Preaching to the choir here. The study was correlative, and social conditions were a part of the examination. The abortion finding was actually incidental to the study, and not the initial focus.
This avoids a whole host of other valid issues of course, namely:
The biology of the issue; aborting a pluripotent cellular mass at a few weeks gestation is not the termination of a human life, it's the termination of something which - given a very narrow set of circumstances - has the potential to become a human life.
So where does human life begin? Birth? If that birth has defects, then should than life be terminated?
I don't believe anyone is qualified to tell you the moment human life begins. My personal opinion (which is not to be taken for objective fact) is around the point of self-sustainable viability - 24 weeks gestation or so.
Or the fact that pregnancy takes an enormous, and still often fatal, toll on the female body.
What are the numbers of fatalities in relation to births then?
Which country and what year? It varies significantly between various nations. I don't want to quote the statistic that's popping into my head for the US and Canada because it's been a couple years since my demography classes.
Or the fact that men bear as much if not more responsibility for a pregnancy than women, yet share none of the biological or emotional cost.
If the child dies at birth, the father will still feel a huge amount of emotional pain, if the child survives, generally, the father will feel deep joy. There is without doubt, a lot of emotion involved for males. They are involved with all the bumps, fuzzy feelings, helping the lady along her way, they try the best to feel every kick that the baby makes inside the womb, they are very, very invovled. How dare you say otherwise.
What you have described is SOME men. It is by no means all, perhaps not even most.
Or the fact the number of pregnancies aborted remains constant regardless of the legality of the procedure, while female mortality is dramatically higher in jurisdictions where the procedure is illegal.
once again, evidence please. how can this be so, in many countries when the process is illegal, and you have nothing to compare it against?
You can compare nations which legalize abortions and which don't? This statistic is widely available and comes from the WHO. Battuta mentioned it earlier too. The WHO, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and several other non-profit international groups regularly do studies and estimates on health. Look up the latest study and compare whichever countries you like.
Or the fact that sexual education is, in general, woefully inadequate and the same people that typically advocate the anti-abortion stance are also the biggest proponents of abstinence-only sex education which actually has the effect of INCREASING teen pregnancy rates in jurisdictions where it is taught.
How is it been taught? By what standard? What statistic do you have to show that this is true. Abstence taught is bound to fail, since it is very natural for humans to engage in sexual relations. So naturally, if this method of education is taught, then it is bound to fail, as it requires zero babies, while each school is bound to get at least two.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/teen-girls-having-less-sex-safer-sex/article704447/ Read and enjoy. Improvement in delivery of sex ed = fewer teens having sex and fewer teen pregnancies, as compared to the model south of the border where abstinence-only is taught. To be fair, my initial point here was directed more at Canada and the US. I don't follow Europe on a regular basis.
Or the fact that it is patently unreasonable for the decision (either way) to be forced upon anyone.
What about the decision if it is forced upon the male. This child will be born, you must support it?
Never really agreed with that either, though it's a thornier issue. If she wants to keep the child and he doesn't, there needs to be a legal apparatus in place to allow that. Right now it's pretty thin (again, in North America).
Ultimately, the decision to abort a pregnancy is the sole decision of the people who created it in the first place. It is no one else's business if they choose to conceive a child or not.
As long as the law permits the couple to do law: eg: incest?
Please don't pull that nonsense. I'm not advocating the abandonment of protection principles firmly entrenched in law to prevent the violation of a legally established human being.
Until someone else is prepared to take over ALL of those costs (I'm especially interested in seeing someone claim the biological cost can be accounted for), then they have precisely ZERO say in that couple's affairs. The same goes for sex itself; the only people who have any say in it are those directly involved. Everyone else can concern themselves with their own affairs.
It is not possible to claim the biological cost, are you going to swap the womb or eggs?
If regards to sex, that only the couple are directly involved, then all laws regarding, age and incest are not relavant, since its their 'own affairs'
This is my point - it ISN'T possible. And therefore, other people need to keep their noses out of it. And as for your second sentence, see my response above. In the case of a sexual assault where there is lack of consent (which both of your examples fall under), it remains firmly entrenched in criminal legislation.
fire away mate
You're so rational I don't have to. I don't see any severe contradictions I can take you to task over (which is pretty rare, so good on you).
I'm warning you in advance so you have some prep time. There are a lot of hypocrites around here that espouse libertarian principles when it comes to government and then promptly turn into facists when it comes to individual social rights. You can't have it one way for one issue and a different way for another just because you personally don't agree with it.
What gives you the right to put people into one camp or the other. Maybe the average person is trying to judge for themselves what they feel is right, and not get stuck in a brand of a way of life! You can have it both ways. You can choose a medium or a centre approach, not merely right or left. It is not that simple.
It's not putting people into camps. My issue is with people who at one point say that the government has no business running health care, or regulating weapons, or intervening in the financial system and scream about how their personal freedoms and liberties are being trampled upon by big government, and then turn around and scream about how the government should be telling people where, how, and when to have sex and what they can and cannot do with the products of intercourse. Where is the personal liberties argument then? It's contradictory.
Fortunately, again, you don't seem to tumble into that nonsense either, so I have no comments about you. =)
