LogFAQs > #931153875

Noop_Noop posted...

actually, thats EXACTLY how most roads got started

In the sense of "the road is the least impassable route we can find so we'll walk on that," sure. In the sense of "this road was built to facilitate transportation along this route," not so much. You're not wrong, but I don't think that interpretation is necessarily applicable here.

Unbridled9 posted...

-snip-

Personally, I don't care for efforts to dehumanize fetuses or delegitimize their lives. Any attempts to draw a line between a non-living fetus and a living one almost invariably end up being either arbitrary or based on convenience, and I don't think either basis is really enough for defining something as significant as life itself. Instead, I'm happy to accept that abortion means taking a human life, meaning it's a decision that should be taken seriously and avoided wherever feasible. I also recognize, however, that taking a life is sometimes the lesser of two evils. Treat it accordingly and try to avoid it, but if you're at a point in your life where you can't feasibly support a kid and you end up with an accidental pregnancy, it's better to kill it than starve all three of you. To that end, it should be legal and readily available.

That said, I'm all for reducing abortion rates. Making them illegal, however, is not a good way to do that. That tends to just push them underground and make them more dangerous, to say nothing of the question of bodily autonomy that always comes up in this discussion. What does work is reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies that happen in the first place, which can be done via comprehensive sex ed and subsidized birth control (and related health care) programs that improve access to those resources. The Netherlands has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world, despite abortion being freely legal and readily accessible up until week 21 (they draw the line at fetal viability), which they've managed by creating a culture where taking responsibility for the risks of sex is easy (information and birth control are readily available to anyone seeking them) and encouraged.

Quite simply, people aren't going to stop having sex just because there's a risk of pregnancy. The "just don't have sex" approach to reducing unwanted pregnancy rates has been tried countless times and failed every time. That means it's just not a sensible approach from a public health perspective, meaning it should not inform laws on the matter. Comprehensive sex ed and subsidized birth control programs, however, have been tried (even in the US) and shown to be excellent for reducing rates. Pro-lifers don't push for more of those, though, because then they don't get to punish people (mostly women) for being dirty sex-havers, which is all most of them actually care about.

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