U.S. Public Continues to Favor Legal Abortion, Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade

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Simple vs. complicated is a red herring.

@redbetta and @goout see simplicity in the association of abortion with sexual liberty. While it is true that chastity and continence would in principle eliminate the need for birth control and abortion, this is not likely to be a successful approach in today’s world. Something more is needed. What could that be?

@HarryStotle, @GiftofMercy, and others see life as the essential issue, and I am much closer to that way of thinking. More precisely, the primary good is love/charity, and respect for life stems from that.

@HarryStotle was the first in this thread to use the word complicated. I took care not to use that word, since I agree that abortion is not inherently complicated.

I wrote about understanding. Why do so many people support the institution of abortion? It’s not because they want babies to die. It’s not because they fail to see that life is a good thing. They support abortion because they desire some other good. Understanding the good that they seek is a first step toward convincing them that life is a greater good.

In my previous post, I listed a few of the goods that people sometimes seek in preference to the life of a baby. Many of these are very powerful and compelling goods, like education, career, financial security, and respect. In todays culture, liberty also counts as a great good.

So the challenge, as I see it, is to win hearts, that is, to end abortion by convincing people that the baby in the womb is loved and that its life is worth more than all these other things. I think the best, most promising pro-life efforts today work along these lines, often at the local community and person-to-person level.
 
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Actually, no, it’s totally different.

Your map shows a very stark northern hemisphere/southern hemisphere line of demarcation. (Yes, I know India and Iran are not southern hemisphere, but you see what I’m talking about.)

My map shows a diagonal line that goes through Central/South America/Africa/Asia. Otherwise, it scoops out the US, Canada, parts of Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand.
 
So the challenge, as I see it, is to win hearts, that is, to end abortion by convincing people that the baby in the womb is loved and that its life is worth more than all these other things. I think the best, most promising pro-life efforts today work along these lines, often at the local community and person-to-person level.
Take a look at two major changes we have made in American Society in the last 70 years – racism and smoking. ( I was born in '41and I remember what things were like then.)

We must deal with abortion the same way we dealt with those two evils – by generating wide-spread public disapproval.
 
Being smart and making smart choices trumps autonomy. You make a mistake and you don’t have the right to force others to agree with your bad decision. I saw that starting in the late 1960s.

And for some, autonomy means no God, no parents and no one else can tell me what to do. That is spoiled brat, even if you’re an adult, thinking. That is “I’ll eat cookies until I throw up” thinking. Some make elaborate intellectual-sounding arguments for their lifestyle choices but that’s all it boils down to. On Friends, Rachel will have all the sex she wants until she gets pregnant. When she does, she loses all interest in Ross. That is beyond selfish or human.
 
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Just to make it clear, I am against abortion. What I am saying is that many of the countries (especially in the southern hemisphere) in which abortion is illegal are also very corrupted. For example in Pakistan there are very restrictive abortion laws (abortion is mostly considered illegal) but the country has an estimated abortion rate higher than USA because there is a very shady structure of semi-illegal medical professionals performing abortions.

 
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Agreed! Along with people do not want to submit there personal feelings to the teachings and authority of the church.
 
The right to life is the most fundamental of all human rights. Without a right to life, all other rights are valueless. What good does freedom of speech do a dead man? How can a corpse exercise the right to trial by jury?

The right to life accrues to each of us as a part of our basic humanity. It is as much a part of us as our minds, our personalities, or our arms and legs. It is given to us by no one. It is ours merely because we are living human beings.

There are those who say that “society” or the government decides when we get the right to life. If that is so, then it is no right at all, but merely a privilege, for if the government can grant the right to life, it can surely withhold it. Once you accept that the government has this power, you must accept, willy-nilly that the government can decree some people – perhaps Jews, or Blacks or Catholics – never get the right to life.

If, therefore there is such a thing as a right to life, it must accrue to every living human being. This sets up a simple, three-part test.

• Is the unborn child living? If it were not, we would not be having this debate!

• Is it human? Check the DNA. If it has rabbit or squirrel DNA, then it is not human. But if it has human DNA, it is human.

• But is it a being? Check the DNA again. If it has the mother’s DNA, then it is a part of her body. But if it has its own DNA, then it is a being – a separate and distinct human life.

Very clearly, the unborn has the same right to live as any other living human being. Who denies that, denies the whole concept of human rights.
 
no disagreement on understanding and winning hearts.
I just disagree with obfuscating the value of human life by even considering other goods as remotely equal in value. (not saying you intend to obfuscate, but it is the general strategy to deflect from the hard truth in favor of lesser goods)

Virtue is difficult.
We live in a culture of unprecedented prosperity and still kill millions of children.
 
And how do you do that? How do you convince those who believe it’s just a “blob of tissue” or that it’s not a baby even as it is traveling down the birth canal?
 
Who has this “unprecedented prosperity”? Who can afford to be a stay at home mom?
 
Just to make it clear, I am against abortion. What I am saying is that many of the countries (especially in the southern hemisphere) in which abortion is illegal are also very corrupted.
Sure. I suppose I’m looking at things from a pre-WWII perspective, where abortion was largely illegal throughout the Western Hemisphere, but the corruption rates were presumably also very low in those same countries.

Interestingly, in 1920, France forbade all contraception and information about contraception— but that was the same year that Lenin legalized abortion. In 1931, Mexico legalized abortion in cases of rape. In 1932, Poland legalized abortion for rape/mother’s health issues. In 1935, Iceland introduced the legality of “therapeutic abortions”, and the same year, Nazi Germany promoted abortion amongst undesirable populations-- such as women with hereditary disorders. The same year, 1935, Ireland prohibited contraception. Interestingly enough, the next year, in 1936, Stalin reversed most of Lenin’s abortion legislation, because he wanted to promote population growth.

So, you have an interesting jockeying across the globe— where the people coming down on the side of abortion rights are people like the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, although it also gained traction in some Central American/Nordic countries. But legislation to make it illegal to pass information to people regarding contraception was being passed within the last 100 years.

And so I guess that’s the perspective where I’m seeing the conversation from— yeah, you can’t pretend that most of the 20th century never happened, but we’re still within living memory of when abortion was illegal, and somehow, society got along okay. 💙
 
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When abortion was illegal, people had to learn to avoid it regardless of their belief system. Eugenics was a big deal in the US and England during the early 1900s. See Buck v. Bell , 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
 
Oh, yes. For sure.

It’s very interesting, reading “Gaudy Night” by Dorothy Sayers. It’s about a bunch of lady professors at an imaginary female Oxford college. It was published in 1935. Although much of the book has to deal with a woman’s place in society-- balancing motherhood, education, work, and so on— the discussion on eugenics plays a remarkably heavy part in the dialogue.
 
Who has this “unprecedented prosperity”? Who can afford to be a stay at home mom?
My wife?
For 20 years.
We went without cable or fancy phones. We did not take out of state vacations. Drove used cars. During our marriage I’ve had two work trucks that ended life at 16 and 17 years old.
We had one sedan for 17 years and another for 12 and just bought another used vehicle.
And I have made between 40-70k per year all that time.

By any standard of measurement our material prosperity is unprecedented.
But we know what Mother Teresa said about poverty in the developed west.
The reason I paid for an abortion 33 years ago is the mother and I were having great sex and didn’t want a child to get in the way.
Pathetic and sad. But all these secondary concerns like career and finances had absolutely nothing to do with my decision to procure an abortion.
 
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And once again… Godwin’s law applies… 🙃
Godwin’s Law has a certain effectiveness that other observations don’t have. And it started with those German villagers in the 40’s who were just as morally numb as current Western society.
They needed to be reminded of the Nazi atrocities with the hope of awakening their consciences.
 
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Thank you for sharing that painful part of your past. I will pray for you, I hope your experience helps open the minds of others.

I think the poll is flawed as I read it, as there’s NO distinction made between trimesters, which is huge for the public. I believe a tiny baby the moment of conception is equal to one at 9 months gestation! The public seems to be different, tolerance for abortion in the third trimester is slim though! It’s almost universally thought to be gruesome. That’s why many prolife advocacy groups are starting there. Good for them.
Well, the way it worked in my life is reflected in Genesis:
Your brother’s (child’s) blood cries out to me from the ground.
If you’re going to be any kind of Christian those words ought to cause some unease and begin some repentance.

If there’s anybody out there thinking that aborting your child will solve a problem, don’t believe it. You will regret it in the deepest and most painful way. But thanks be to God in Christ Jesus who can make all things new. That child you are carrying can change your life even if the circumstances of birth seem unbearable. Give life a chance.
 
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You can have a career, an education, financial security, etc. without abortion. All it takes is being responsible with your sexual activity. The problem is is that people today are allergic to responsibility. They want all these rights with none of the consequences.
 
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