<p>lol @ the crime thing. </p>
<p>i'd rather get my bike stolen than murder millions of babies and toss them into dumpsters...... but whatever makes you happy :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Your above statement is off on a couple of counts. First, simply because birth control has pros does not mean that the cons are automatically outweighed. Secondly, even if I agreed with you that it did benefit society, subsidizing is NOT the way to go. Subsidizing involves the arrogance that you know better than other groups/individuals what to do with their money, and the forced transactions involved in taking those groups/individuals property is a denial of rights. Its pretty safe to say that most people agree that murder should be outlawed because, for one, murder involves denial of rights; specifically, the right to life. There is a gray area around abortion, however, because while many believe that abortion is acceptable, many others (myself included) believe that birth control is a denial of human rights and should therefore not be allowed.</p>
<p>On a slightly different topic, I offer for your optional perusal the following recent article (which I post in its entirety b/c its not available online to everyone), which is a counterargument to the idea that abortion benefits society.</p>
<p>Violent crime in the United States shot up like a rocket after 1960. From 1960 to 1991, reported violent crime increased by an incredible 372 percent. This disturbing trend was seen across the country, with robbery peaking in 1991 and rape and aggravated assault following in 1992. But then something unexpected happened: Between 1991 and 2000, rates of violent crime and property crime fell sharply, dropping by 33 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Murder rates were stable up to 1991, but then plunged by a steep 44 percent. </p>
<p>Several plausible explanations have been advanced for the drop during the 1990s. Some stress law-enforcement measures, such as higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, broken windows police strategies, and the death penalty. Others emphasize right-to-carry laws for concealed handguns, a strong economy, or the waning of the crack-cocaine epidemic. </p>
<p>Of all the explanations, perhaps the most controversial is the one that attributes lower crime rates in the 90s to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Courts 1973 decision to mandate legalized abortion. According to this argument, the large number of women who began having abortions shortly after Roe were most likely unmarried, in their teens, or poor, and their children would have been unwanted. Children born in these circumstances would have had a higher-than-average likelihood of becoming criminals, and would have entered their teens their criminal prime in the early 1990s. But because they were aborted, they were not around to make trouble. </p>
<p>This is an attention-grabbing theory, to be sure. But a thorough analysis of abortion and crime statistics leads to the opposite conclusion: that abortion increases crime. </p>
<p>Debate about the relationship between abortion and crime was greatly influenced by a Swedish study published in 1966 by Hans Forssman and Inga Thuwe. They followed the children of 188 women who were denied abortions from 1939 to 1941 at the only hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. Their study compared these unwanted children with another group, this one composed of the first child born at the hospital after each of the unwanted children. They found that the unwanted children were much more likely to grow up in adverse conditions for example, with divorced parents, or in foster homes. These children were also more likely to become delinquents and have trouble in school. Unfortunately, the authors never investigated whether the childrens unwantedness caused their problems, or were simply correlated with them. </p>
<p>Forssman and Thuwes claim, notwithstanding the limits of the data supporting it, became axiomatic among supporters of legalized abortion. During the 1960s and 70s, before Roe, abortion-rights advocates attributed all sorts of social ills, including crime and mental illness, to unwanted children. Weeding these poor, crime-prone people out of the population through abortion was presented as a way to make society safer. </p>
<p>Recently, John Donohue and Steven Levitt a law professor and an economist, respectively revived the debate. They presented evidence that supposedly demonstrated abortions staggeringly large effect on crime rates, and argued that up to one-half of the overall crime reduction between 1991 and 1997, and up to 81 percent of the drop in murder rates during that period, was attributable to the rise in abortions in the early to mid 1970s. If that claim was accurate, they had surely found the Holy Grail of crime reduction. </p>
<p>Most people who challenge the abortion reduces crime argument do so on ethical grounds, rather than trying to rebut the empirical evidence. But it is worth looking at the data, too because they do not prove what they are supposed to. </p>
<p>To understand why abortion might not cut crime, one should first consider how dramatically it changed sexual relationships. Once abortion became widely available, people engaged in much more premarital sex, and also took less care in using contraceptives. Abortion, after all, offered a backup if a woman got pregnant, making premarital sex, and the nonuse of contraception, less risky. In practice, however, many women found that they couldnt go through with an abortion, and out-of-wedlock births soared. Few of these children born out of wedlock were put up for adoption; most women who were unwilling to have abortions were also unwilling to give up their children. Abortion also eliminated the social pressure on men to marry women who got pregnant. All of these outcomes more out-of-wedlock births, fewer adoptions than expected, and less pressure on men to do the right thing led to a sharp increase in single-parent families. </p>
<p>Multiple studies document this change. From the early 1970s through the late 1980s, as abortion became more and more frequent, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, from an average of 5 percent (196569) to over 16 percent twenty years later (198589). Among blacks, the number jumped from 35 percent to 62 percent. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion laws, they were certainly a key contributor. </p>
<p>What happened to all these children raised by single women? No matter how much they want their children, single parents tend to devote less attention to them than married couples do. Single parents are less likely than married parents to read to their children or take them on excursions, and more likely to feel angry at their children or to feel that they are burdensome. Children raised out of wedlock have more social and developmental problems than children of married couples by almost any measure from grades to school expulsion to disease. Unsurprisingly, children from unmarried families are also more likely to become criminals. </p>
<p>So the opposing lines of argument in the abortion reduces crime debate are clear: One side stresses that abortion eliminates unwanted children, the other that it increases out-of-wedlock births. The question is: Which consequence of abortion has the bigger impact on crime? </p>
<p>Unfortunately for those who argue that abortion reduces crime, Donohue and Levitts research suffered from methodological flaws. As The Economist noted, Donohue and Levitt did not run the test they thought they had. Work by two economists at the Boston Federal Reserve, Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, found that, when the test was run correctly, it indicated that abortion actually increases violent crime. John Whitley and I had written an earlier study that found a similar connection between abortion and murder namely, that legalizing abortion raised the murder rate, on average, by about 7 percent. </p>
<p>The abortion decreases crime theory runs into even more problems when the population is analyzed by age group. Suppose that liberalizing abortion in the early 1970s can indeed explain up to 80 percent of the drop in murder during the 1990s, as Donohue and Levitt claim. Deregulating abortion would then reduce criminality first among age groups born after the abortion laws changed, when the unwanted, crime-prone elements began to be weeded out. Yet when we look at the declining murder rate during the 1990s, we find that this is not the case at all. Instead, murder rates began falling first among an older generation those over 26 born before Roe. It was only later that criminality among those born after Roe began to decline. </p>
<p>Legalizing abortion increased crime. Those born in the four years after Roe were much more likely to commit murder than those born in the four years prior. This was especially true when they were in their criminal prime, as shown in the nearby chart. </p>
<p>The abortion decreases crime argument gets even weaker when we look at data from Canada. While crime rates in both the United States and Canada began declining at the same time, Canada liberalized its abortion laws much later than the U.S. did. Although Quebec effectively legalized abortion in late 1976, it wasnt until 1988, in a case originating in Ontario, that the Canadian supreme court struck down limits on abortion nationwide. If the legalization of abortion in the U.S. caused crime to begin dropping 18 years later, why did the crime rate begin falling just three years after the comparable legal change in Canada? </p>
<p>Even if abortion did lower crime by culling out unwanted children, this effect would be greatly outweighed by the rise in crime associated with the greater incidence of single-parent families that also follows from abortion liberalization. In short, more abortions have brought more crime.</p>
<p>However you look at it, abortion is abortion and women will do it when they want to, one way or another. Women made abortions centuries before abortion clinics existed..... It's not up to the government to decide whether a woman can or cannot abort a baby she doesn't want. It's a matter of personal choice and has nothing to do with rising/dropping crime rates (as far as the woman is personally concerned).</p>
<p>Obviously most women, if they're thinking about abortion, won't be thinking, "Well, I really can't afford or take care of a baby, but since this child might contribute to a rising crime rate, I guess I won't go through with it;" their rationale is probably a lot more personal and emotional. </p>
<p>However, I believe that abortion is NOT a matter of personal choice because I believe that abortion is murder.</p>
<p>Is using a condom the murder of a few million potential babies? Then maybe people should have sex solely to breed?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, not at all. Its not that birth control is the murder of potential babies, its that its a violation of the act itself. Sex is the pen-ultimate act of self-giving (the ultimate being sacrificing your life), and to commit as an act of lust or to forcefully separate from its procreative aspect is fundamentally wrong. If a married man and woman are biologically unable to have children, it does not mean that they shouldnt have sex. A married couple can have sex and try to naturally not have children, but birth control is artificially trying not to have children. I do not believe that sex should be treated solely as a means of breeding. Sex is a beautiful act of love, pleasure, and openness, and as such an act of commitment, it deserves the equally committed commitment of marriage. To have sex outside of marriage cheapens the other person youre saying, well, I love you enough to completely give myself to you physically, but I dont love you enough to give myself to you in marriage. Its a non-sequitur.</p>
<p><however, i="" believe="" that="" abortion="" is="" not="" a="" matter="" of="" personal="" choice="" because="" murder="">.
YOU believe it is murder - YOU will not have an abortion, OTHER believe it is not - and they will have it.
It is still a matter of personal choice and only personal choice.</however,></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you've read Crime and Punishment (because it's the most ready-made comparison):
So then, would I be correct in logically concluding that if someone came along who honestly believed they had a right to kill you or anybody because they believed they could decide who should live and who shouldn't and a bystander tried to reason with them and the killer said in response, "YOU believe it is murder - YOU will not kill anyone, I believe it is not murder, and I will kill them. It is still a matter of personal choice and only personal choice," and proceeded to kill a friend or relative of yours, you'd have to stand by and agree with them?</p>
<p>spooch, marinapus is right. The main issue with abortion is that many people have varying ideas about when life begins (as soon as the egg unites with the sperm or when the mother has entered the third trimester). Just because you believe that life begins when the egg and sperm unite, doesn't mean that everyone else does. Your example is irrelevant. There is no question to whether another living human being is alive so killing them (even if you believe it is okay) would definitely be murder.</p>
<p>hotpiece101, you are making an exception to the rule (you say: killing someone you see on the street is murder even if you believe its not) while refusing to treat abortion similarly (you say: its not murder even if you think it is). If Im reading you correctly, youre treating the two differently because people disagree about abortion but There is no question to whether another living human being is alive so killing them (even if you believe it is okay) would definitely be murder. Treating issues of human life and death differently simply because of what you judge to be lack of sufficient consensus makes no sense. If Im misinterpreting you, go ahead and correct me.
Do you also believe euthanasia and assisted suicide are acceptable?</p>
<p>I think you are misinterpreting, spooch. What I am saying is that there is no conclusive evidence that an embryo is actually a life (rather, our definition of life is not clear on when it begins). So, while you may think that a newly formed embryo is a life, others may think that a baby is a life when (and only when) it's heart begins to beat much later in the pregnancy. Because there is no conclusive test of life (besides a beating heart) there is no way to definitively say that abortion is murder. However, if you see another person on the street and decide to kill them, it is murder because that person was definitely and conclusively alive.</p>
<p>So, I guess what I'm saying is, until we come up with an absolute rule as to where a life begins or ends, all we can go on are opinions. It may be your opinion that as soon as an egg and sperm meet, life is born. It may be someone else's opinion that a person is not alive until there is a heartbeat.</p>
<p>And just for the record, I am not for abortions in anyway, but I'm definitely pro-choice. I know that I would never, ever get an abortion (regardless of the circumstances) because I just don't think it's right. However, I also believe that it's not my place to decide what any woman should do with her body in any circumstances.</p>
<p>"YOU believe it is murder - YOU will not have an abortion, OTHER believe it is not - and they will have it.
It is still a matter of personal choice and only personal choice."</p>
<p>Believing it is not murder does not make it so any more tham believing Jews are subhuman made the holocaust hunky-dory. Society does in fact have the right to inflict its values on people who honestly do not ascribe to those values and does so all the time. For instance there are many people who firmly and honestly believe that having sex with children is OK. That of course does not make it so.</p>
<p>In the case of abortion our society hasn't come to a firm and clear conclusion or rather the consenus has dissolved. In the absence of a consenus the Supreme Court legalized it. That decision was objectively bad law and an overstepping of its authority. Those kinds of decisions should be made by legislatures in a free society but what is done is done.</p>
<p>Those who applaud the courts decision should bear in mind that what can be decreed by eight old geezers can be undecreed and it has happened a number of times in the past - ask the ghost of Dred Scott.</p>
<p>^Sounds fair - we've reached an amiable impasse.</p>
<p>that was directed at hotpiece101</p>
<p>where did all of the fundies come from?
this is very unfortunate. humans are programmed to have sex, and the lack of birth control isn't going to curb any natural appetites. i don't see anyone supporting unneeded pregnancies for college women...
oh well, i guess we need to pour more money into liberating and keeping gays unmarried.</p>
<p>Bored,</p>
<p>the subsidies came from the companies themselves... and yeah, this is a pretty unfortunate situation</p>
<p>oh, and i'm glad we've come to some kind of accord, spooch.</p>
<p>Maybe the focus for these young girls should be on self control, rather than birth control!</p>
<p>"Sex is a beautiful act of love, pleasure, and openness, and as such an act of commitment, it deserves the equally committed commitment of marriage. To have sex outside of marriage cheapens the other person youre saying, well, I love you enough to completely give myself to you physically, but I dont love you enough to give myself to you in marriage."</p>
<p>What are you? ****ing 10 years old?</p>