What if abstinence-only and outlawing abortions actually made things worse?

[camerong]

Outlawing abortions would not “cause” women to get unsafe abortions. The statement denies free will.

Justice, by definition, requires adherence to moral principles. It cannot be achieved by a negation of morality.

Morality is not measured by outcomes, but by coincidence with natural law. It predicts an end of happiness that supersedes the intermediate end of success.

In the example above, a greater wrong than abortion occurs because the law itself is put to death and all depend on the rule of law for survival.

Causality is a tricky business. It is true that no law will cause anyone to do anything, if we are looking for the strict cause. However, we can say that but for a law outlawing abortion, some women would not obtain unsafe abortions (I realize the irony of such a term). So, we should be concerned with the likely results of the laws we enact. Imagine that I leave my keys in my car, and my windows down in a bad part of town. While I may not be to blame for the theft, I could have prevented it with prudent planning. If we enact laws that result in women obtaining abortions that kill them in the process, we must ensure that the law is worth those deaths in other ways. (Again, I am, for the sake of the argument, assuming that outlawing abortions will cause such deaths.)

My next question is, why is upholding morality a more important goal than preventing the deaths of these women?

 

[Mystic_Banana]

You’re both missing the point.

Well, no, we didn’t, we just answered the question. Just not as thouroughly as you, with less hard statistical reference!

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Causality is a tricky business. It is true that no law will cause anyone to do anything, if we are looking for the strict cause. However, we can say that but for a law outlawing abortion, some women would not obtain unsafe abortions (I realize the irony of such a term). So, we should be concerned with the likely results of the laws we enact. Imagine that I leave my keys in my car, and my windows down in a bad part of town. While I may not be to blame for the theft, I could have prevented it with prudent planning. If we enact laws that result in women obtaining abortions that kill them in the process, we must ensure that the law is worth those deaths in other ways. (Again, I am, for the sake of the argument, assuming that outlawing abortions will cause such deaths.)

My next question is, why is upholding morality a more important goal than preventing the deaths of these women?

Well, you could take a utilitarian point of view, and point out that if making abortions legal increases abortions rate, you’re still see a reduction in the resulting number of net deaths, hence, by making abortions illegal. If you accept the argument that legalised abortion increases abortion rate in general, that is.

On a less perfunctory moral point, you could also refer to the risks being taken being those who, of their own free will, engaged in actions that culminated in such risks in the first place.

It’s only when you get to the issue of rape and suchlike that this gets compromised, at which point you’d really want to see some major improvements in social/legal support for the victim, and alternatives to abortion such as adoption, fostering, social care etc. At the moment, these areas are severely compromised, certainly here in the UK, and actions like adoption are demonised, I think, perversely, far more so than abortion

 

[camerong]

Thank you again for the thoughtful replies. St Francis, you must have posted while I was drafting my latest post, and I missed it (I wasn’t just ignoring it).

I see the point, that we really are required to reduce this to evidence of the practice’s effect. I’m troubled by this, because I don’t see the evidence as being terribly clear. Let me ask, where do you all find evidence that the number of abortions increased after Roe v. Wade?

 

[whm]

My next question is, why is upholding morality a more important goal than preventing the deaths of these women?

I don’t understand the question. We are talking about 1,000,000+ babies not being killed! It is not some moral abstract.

 

[St_Francis]

Thank you again for the thoughtful replies. St Francis, you must have posted while I was drafting my latest post, and I missed it (I wasn’t just ignoring it).

I see the point, that we really are required to reduce this to evidence of the practice’s effect. I’m troubled by this, because I don’t see the evidence as being terribly clear. Let me ask, where do you all find evidence that the number of abortions increased after Roe v. Wade?

First, Bernard Nathanson admits that the numbers were grossly inflated before Roe v Wade by those (of whom he was one) who wanted abortion legalized. (He later converted, first to the pro-life cause, then to Catholicism.) He writes: We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalising abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalization.

Here is a chart listing the number of abortions; here is a chart listing abortions per 1,000 women (aged 15–45). As you can see, the numbers went up drastically after legalization.

Here are charts of what they have found about sexual activity among teens (second page of document, p. 161).

And webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:njDa3ZjQe7MJ:www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/teensex/teensex-0293.shtml+number+of+teens+sexual+activity+1960+1970&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us states: A cursory glance at National Survey on Family Growth reports shows that there was indeed a sexual revolution. Teen-agers in the early 1970s were twice as likely to have had sex as were teen-agers in the early 1960s. The trend of increased sexual activity continued well into the late 1980s. Rates of sexual experience increased about 45 percent between 1970 and 1980 and increased another 20 percent in just three years, from 1985 to 1988, but rates have now apparently plateaued.

Today, over half of all unmarried teen-age girls report that they have engaged in sexual intercourse at least once. These aggregate statistics for all teen-agers obscure the second remarkable aspect of this 30-year trend: Sexual activity is starting at ever-younger ages.

And teens are not only having sex earlier, they are also having sex with more partners. Almost 7 percent of ninth-grade females told the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 1990 that they had had intercourse with four or more different partners, while 19 percent of males the same age reported having done so. By the 12th grade, 17 percent of girls and 38 percent of boys reported having four or more sexual partners. (paragraph breaks added by me)

The information on increases in teen sexual activity all seem to be based on a mere 4 surveys, so there is not a lot of information out there.

HTH!

 

[Biggie]

Causality is a tricky business. It is true that no law will cause anyone to do anything, if we are looking for the strict cause. However, we can say that but for a law outlawing abortion, some women would not obtain unsafe abortions (I realize the irony of such a term). So, we should be concerned with the likely results of the laws we enact. Imagine that I leave my keys in my car, and my windows down in a bad part of town. While I may not be to blame for the theft, I could have prevented it with prudent planning. If we enact laws that result in women obtaining abortions that kill them in the process, we must ensure that the law is worth those deaths in other ways. (Again, I am, for the sake of the argument, assuming that outlawing abortions will cause such deaths.)

Your leaving the keys in your car would not have been the cause of your car being stolen, any more than your parking your car where you parked it or your driving your car to where you parked it or your leaving home in the first place. It’s not really that tricky.

But because people sometimes leave their keys in their cars “causing” the cars to be stolen, should a law then be enacted whereby stealing cars is made legal? After all, the pursuit of car thieves places lives in jeopardy, and are not lives more valuable than cars?

My next question is, why is upholding morality a more important goal than preventing the deaths of these women?

In the first place, upholding morality did not cause the “deaths of these women”. Immorality caused the deaths in their own willingness to undertake abortion and in the willingness of others to procure and perform it.

In the second place, any law that denies essential natural morality debases the law as a whole. It says that the law itself is arbitrary, having no relationship to objective justice. If the law is simply arbitrary, then anything, car theft for example, can be made legal. Respect for the law can then only be commanded by duress and the rule of law breaks down in the justified and righteous anger of those victimized by it.

And if I were to accept the logical and factual error that law prohibiting abortion “causes” back alley abortions and therefore “causes” women to die, am I then to accept that child sacrifice must be taken up to save the lives of mature decision makers?

Or perhaps I should ask if the sacrifice of a child would save the lives of all the women who have died from back alley abortions, should we then erect an altar to Baal, stretch a child out upon that altar and disembowel the child?

 

[St_Francis]

Causality is a tricky business. It is true that no law will cause anyone to do anything, if we are looking for the strict cause. However, we can say that but for a law outlawing abortion, some women would not obtain unsafe abortions (I realize the irony of such a term). So, we should be concerned with the likely results of the laws we enact. Imagine that I leave my keys in my car, and my windows down in a bad part of town. While I may not be to blame for the theft, I could have prevented it with prudent planning. If we enact laws that result in women obtaining abortions that kill them in the process, we must ensure that the law is worth those deaths in other ways. (Again, I am, for the sake of the argument, assuming that outlawing abortions will cause such deaths.)

This is an interesting aspect if you leave out the issue of outlawing abortions’ resulting in increased deaths of women.

WRT the car: leaving one’s purse or wallet just lying around in a park, for example, would be against Catholic morality, because it is causing an undue level of temptation for one’s neighbor. We are to be careful not to tempt our neighbors by doing things like leaving valuables around, wearing immodest clothing, provoking them to envy, etc.

So I think that legally allowing abortion is *tempting *people, just as leaving a Lambourghini unlocked with the keys in it in a poor neighborhood. When we make a firm statement that abortion is illegal, we are accomplishing several things: 1. clarifying that abortion is something our society considers wrong; 2. making abortion more difficult to obtain; 3. making it more expensive. Thus, having abortion legal is immoral because, among other things, it tempts people.

My next question is, why is upholding morality a more important goal than preventing the deaths of these women?

I think someone explained that each abortion already causes a death—a death of a real child. These speculations refer not only to hypothetical women, but very unlikely hypothetical women, as the assumption on which your question is based has not only not been proven, but has been disproven.

(So, again, the burden of proof is on the person who is making this argument to you rather than on you. Don’t forget to make that person prove the assertion rather than trying to refute it!!!<<<<< Very important point in many debates!)

 

[markomalley]

Foremost, I wholly believe in the Church’s authority on these matters. However, I think the evidence that abstinence-only approaches reduces sex outside of marriage, and the evidence that outlawing abortions reduces abortions, is equivocal (in other words, its not entirely clear). My question is this–what if it were proved beyond a doubt that abstinence-only education made kids have sex more than endorsing contraception, and outlawing abortions wouldn’t decrease abortions, but instead make the same number of abortions far more dangerous? What then?

My thought is that we take these positions primarily because they are the morally correct positions, not because they are practically effective. It may happen to be that they are practically effective, but even if they aren’t, that does not change the moral imperative. Thoughts?

Consider this: almost literally everything in our culture screams at kids to act in an immoral fashion…(we’re talking about premarital sex here, but that is not the only immorality that is openly advocated).

Television, books, magazines, music, fashion, the news, the medical/psychological community, government, and school (consider the influence of the social studies/history curriculum) all push kids toward living in the exact opposite direction than what Holy Mother Church teaches.

In other words, I would be surprised if, in this culture, an abstinence only sex ed class would even marginally succeed. I say this, not out of disrespect for an abstinence class, but because of all the other influences that also seek to teach our children.

Abstinence does not so much need to be taught: chastity does. Morality does. Absolutes do.

Bottom line: we need to change the culture of death we live in to a culture of life. That requires us to evangelize the culture and to work to shape that culture. I’m not talking about a Jerry Falwell style of imposition of your rules. I’m talking about working to change peoples’ hearts.

 

[JimG]

What if widespread use of contraception increased the number of abortions?

That is exactly what has happened over the past 50 years, especially in view of the situation just prior to the encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Contraception was pretty much condemned universally by Christians, not just Catholics. Once it became not only accepted, but widely promoted, what happened? There were more unplanned pregnancies because there was more premarital and extramarital sex. No contraceptive is 100% effective. Sex will result in pregnancy. Mother nature doesn’t like to be fooled. And that means more abortions.

That’s what happened. Then it was further abetted by complete and total legalization through Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton.

Now it is further abetted by the early and constant sexualization of children.

 

[Elizabeth502]

OP:

I think (in response to one of your earlier questions) that the hypothetical is perhaps not as intriguing or as urgent as the real. I.m.o., sexuality is out of control in this country. It’s not just because we live in a sexualized culture, but because there is little value placed on self-control of any kind – in food, in drink, in recreation, everything. This is partly what happens in a culture of relative affluence: decadence, and chasing after stimulation because of ennui.

In an oversexed culture which combines with self-indulgence and the emphasis on personal rights, it will be difficult to approach the containment of that through legal means.

The culture has to stop living hedonistically in order for abortions to decrease, because most abortions are procured in this country by unmarried women. What it means is that alternative ways of living have to become attractive – more attractive than what exists now. For example, there is a Slow Food movement which is becoming more popular. There is another movement represented by public service announcements which stress slowing down and living more simply, and living in accord with time-honored values. (Reading together as a family, spending time together, etc.)

Such things can’t be legislated, i.m.o.

 

[chain]

I don’t think the solution to abortions is necessarily making them illegal. Plenty of things are illegal an still happen. I would not mind it being illegal…, but think a larger effort should be placed on changing attitudes (the heart and mind). Right now the average teenager probably cares more about the welbeing of stray kittens than an unborn child. After that, the second, and equally important, step of ensuring they see life as a viable choice. To see that their life will be more filled, rather than ruined, by bringing the child into the world (even if they choose to bless another family with it via adoption).

Once the heart is changed, and life is an option - abortion will be as easily made illegal as cock fights. There may be limited violation - but not my the majority.

 

[St_Francis]

I don’t think the solution to abortions is necessarily making them illegal. Plenty of things are illegal an still happen. I would not mind it being illegal…, but think a larger effort should be placed on changing attitudes (the heart and mind). Right now the average teenager probably cares more about the welbeing of stray kittens than an unborn child. After that, the second, and equally important, step of ensuring they see life as a viable choice. To see that their life will be more filled, rather than ruined, by bringing the child into the world (even if they choose to bless another family with it via adoption).

Once the heart is changed, and life is an option - abortion will be as easily made illegal as cock fights. There may be limited violation - but not my the majority.

I think that most people would agree with you there

 

[Mystic_Banana]

I think that most people would agree with you there

Well said, both! Changing hearts and minds is the most important thing. But law, society, and our hearts and minds are all intermingled. And at the moment, all of them are predominently pro-‘choice’. I think it’d take the same hard slog to reverse the situation.

Looking back at my earlier post, I have to say, that’s uncharacteristically miltant of me. I think what needs to be emphasised is the terrible crime of aborting unborn children. I think there was a rather brutal article in Time magazine recently - that’s the kind of thing that might work for starters.

I think I’d like to emphasize the need to encourage greater support and provision of alternatives as well - if you don’t, I don’t think you’ll sway anyone very quickly. Even in less hedonistic societies, threat of punishment doesn’t stop people doing what is wrong - anything but! And penalising unmarried sex wouldn’t neccesary help, as much as possibly increase resistence. These things have always occured, and treating them with contempt only increases (justifiably) sympathy for the perpetrators, and then (less justifiably) sympathy for the act itself.

Tying these things so closely together as if one and the same, and treating them accordingly, isn’t neccesarily too helpful, either, I think. Linking them, however, may well be. How do you enact culture change? Well, I’m not sure if one isn’t underway, quitely, anyway. But to get it in the mainstream media at all, without just being aggressively judgemental, or coming across as so (not least due to the stereotypes generated in opposition to the idea) is the biggest challenge

 

[catharina]

It’s sad and unnerving to recognize that the pro-abortion-campaign has done so well with the under-40 generations. Having gone to school when God was outlawed and when abortion was in-lawed, I wonder if History was ever taught.

Until the 1930s (less than 100 yrs ago) no RECOGNIZED religion supported the teachings and use of contraception. Then one-by-one, Protestant denominations fell for it. Abortion was ALWAYS disdained, loathed and outlawed, almost without exception across the nation - until 40 years ago.

Although they seem unaware of this recent history,
young folks wonder WHY elders are sickened by the mindless “echo” of the baby-killers.
May God help our nation.

 

[markomalley]

I don’t think the solution to abortions is necessarily making them illegal. Plenty of things are illegal an still happen. I would not mind it being illegal…, but think a larger effort should be placed on changing attitudes (the heart and mind). Right now the average teenager probably cares more about the welbeing of stray kittens than an unborn child. After that, the second, and equally important, step of ensuring they see life as a viable choice. To see that their life will be more filled, rather than ruined, by bringing the child into the world (even if they choose to bless another family with it via adoption).

Once the heart is changed, and life is an option - abortion will be as easily made illegal as cock fights. There may be limited violation - but not my the majority.

I think that most people would agree with you there

Although I agree with that sentiment for a true cure for this social cancer, I don’t think that it should be legalized using the justification that they will occur anyway due to cultural defects.

 

[St_Francis]

Although I agree with that sentiment for a true cure for this social cancer, I don’t think that it should be legalized using the justification that they will occur anyway due to cultural defects.

I thought that Chain brought up good points, but I totally believe in making abortion illegal. People who say that they will occur anyway… I just say, so on that argument, we should legalize stealing? (or other crimes) But if we ever were in a position to render abortion illegal, I think it should be done with a hefty education program so that everyone will have the opportunity to understand. Lots of pictures of unborn babies And lots of explanation that abc doesn’t always work, that sex is where babies come from, etc.

 

[JimG]

It’s sad and unnerving to recognize that the pro-abortion-campaign has done so well with the under-40 generations. Having gone to school when God was outlawed and when abortion was in-lawed, I wonder if History was ever taught.

Until the 1930s (less than 100 yrs ago) no RECOGNIZED religion supported the teachings and use of contraception. Then one-by-one, Protestant denominations fell for it. Abortion was ALWAYS disdained, loathed and outlawed, almost without exception across the nation - until 40 years ago.

Although they seem unaware of this recent history,
young folks wonder WHY elders are sickened by the mindless “echo” of the baby-killers.
May God help our nation.

You are correct. Within the space of a generation, the entire culture has turned from life to death.

To anyone under 40 years of age, this culture seems normal because it has been that way for their entire life. But it is far from normal. I find myself continually astonished, at least when I stop to think about it, at the things we tolerate now–the things that even I tolerate now, because I’ve been brainwashed by 40 years of watching TV.

Moms have been taught that Dad’s aren’t needed. It’s OK to engage in non-marital procreation because any children that result can be killed, tossed away, or if lucky, given away, or raised by grandparents, or in one-parent homes. Even since Christians began to accept the contraceptive mentality, children have been shortchanged. They are abortion survivors to whom divorce is normal and family life is often a mere wished-for fairy tale.

 

[catharina]

You are correct. Within the space of a generation, the entire culture has turned from life to death.

To anyone under 40 years of age, this culture seems normal because it has been that way for their entire life. But it is far from normal. I find myself continually astonished, at least when I stop to think about it, at the things we tolerate now–the things that even I tolerate now, because I’ve been brainwashed by 40 years of watching TV.

Moms have been taught that Dad’s aren’t needed. It’s OK to engage in non-marital procreation because any children that result can be killed, tossed away, or if lucky, given away, or raised by grandparents, or in one-parent homes. Even since Christians began to accept the contraceptive mentality, children have been shortchanged. They are abortion survivors to whom divorce is normal and family life is often a mere wished-for fairy tale.

Jim, It’s actually TWO generations by now.
Sociologists consider twenty years to equal one generation.
So by now, we truly have TWO generations of UNAWARE Catholics,
not to mention those youmger ones who are not Catholic.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

The irony is, that there is a general concept that the current cultural climate is one devoid of dogma - based on an allegedly unbiased scientific objectivity.

Most of the books I read, most of the music that’s available, most of the programmes on television - all preaching the same awful tune.

I have to say, I’m glad I was brought up Catholic, otherwise I’d probably never think it was ever thought things were different. You’re probably right, it wasn’t so long ago, but reinterpreted history would deny that. Mind you, modernism has been the core social force for, what, 500 years? Funnily enough, the so-called dark ages (AKA the middle ages) it seems to me probably didn’t include half as many awful ideologies as have been produced since. Even the scarier (and ultimately, admitted to be embarassingly) harsh and cruel elements of Catholicism all hark to the renaissence, rather than the ‘dark ages’ they’re stereotypically attached to.

40 years ago? I’d say the rot set in far earlier than that. But then, who would live in the dark ages? Then again, maybe they were genuinely happier back then - and closer to God. Who knows?