| mrstickball said: Thanks for the data. Still though, you must understand the idea that if most western countries are still aborting 20-30% of all births, you are hurting your birth rate by approximately 0.4-0.6 children per family which is right where Europe has dipped under the replacement rate. That is, that if abortion occurred at a rate of 1-3%, Europe wouldn't have a declining population. I agree (and I mentioned too) that education and economic background have a great impact on why women abort. It is the same in America, too. We do need better education and understanding to help prevent abortions. I would disagree though on why people get abortions in more 'severe situations'. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html Has a lot of great abortion statistics. It is good to know that Europe is leading the way on fewer abortions (hurray for Europe!) According to their data, the greatest reason for abortions is unwanted pregnancies (duh!) as half of all unwanted pregnancies end in abortion (rather than for medical purposes). A correlating factor of why abortions occur is the lack of contraceptives - 2/3rds of all unintended pregnancies occur when a woman is not using any form of contraception. So I would argue that:
I agree that a stipend should be rendered to women that are willing to carry their child to term should there be a waiting list for adoptions. In America, there is a lot of red tape for adoption which may cause a negative perception concerning adoption - which I think is very bad for children. But I must ask this of you, HighwayStar: Do you believe (regardless of legality) that abortions are a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not referring to legality, only to your view of abortions. |
Sorry MrStickball, I was extremely busy yesterday and today...
Anyway, I agree abortions are inherently bad, I would never advise one if I knew someone who didn't have a good reason. However, I do think that despite them being bad it would be rather more damaging to ban them. We live in a world that has abortion, the technology and the know how to perform abortions exists, you will never get rid of that, if it is banned you would drive abortion underground. If you drive the abortion industry underground then you wont particularly reduce the abortion rate in a significant way (you may get it down from 50% to 30% maybe) and put thousands of women at risk because untrained people will be performing abortions in unsanitary conditions.
Now I'm going to try and rationalise this tailored to your views. You want a significantly lower abortion rate, may I suggest that banning it will not solve this in any way. I think to achieve what you desire, the correct procedure would be to...
- Extend education facilities to teach about abortion,
- Increase the help provided and the information given out by family planning clinics,
- Offer social benefits and childcare tokens to those who are seeking help
- Promote the healthy use of contraceptives.
I think that these methods will all decrease the number of abortions and unwanted pregnancies in a manner in which you would hope for, without abortion being banned. It has potential to be a safe and clean way to tackle the problem of high abortion rates.
What do you think?
...
As for my personal beliefs on abortion, it is all situation dependant.
My current situation is that I'm doing a PhD and this also means that I'm out of work (it is the equivalent of a full time job and then some), my girlfriend is a doctor and is new to the field. If we found out tomorrow that she was pregnant then our situation would be tricky, in this time of life it would be hard to make the commitment. If my girlfriend pulled out now then the likelihood of her getting back into medicine would be remote, it is a field in which unless you are experienced, it is easy to fall behind very quickly. Maternity in her field would have to be taken a few years after she has been working. I am, how shall I put this, unwilling to leave education. I only have one real shot at it while I'm young and I want to take it. So on that basis, if she told me she was pregnant I would advise an abortion as early as possible* within the first term. However, it is her body so she ultimately gets to make the decision.
However, I'm certain the chances of that happening are extremely remote as we are wise enough to make sure we use safe contraceptives (the details of which I wont disgust you with lol).
(*I say as early as possible because I don't think I could deal with an abortion after 20-25 weeks, I would feel it was too far. Third trimester abortion sickens me, but I still support peoples right to do it (after extensive reasoning)).
Anyway, if in three or four years the same situation happened again I would advise to keep the baby as by then our lives will be stable enough to make the commitment to support a child.
