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[martinuzz]

personally i think that if abortions become illegal it should in turn become legal to force men to adopt unwanted babies and care for them until they're 18

That sounds like a splendid idea, forcing children to grow up with a parent who doesn't want them. They'll surely get all the love and care they need!

[dragdeler]

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[ChairmanPoo]

We will havent sent you to the sausage factory long before that, Dragdeler

[feelotraveller]

On an unrelated point, I agree with Arx. I don't know when calling religous people 'cat-lickers' and zealots became the cool thing to do in this thread, but frankly I'm not into it.

Well that's a rather curious and humourless interpretation, somewhat like a knight errant charging at windmills.  But I guess you have your reasons.

[McTraveller]

All I'm going to add is this question:  Why is it orders of magnitude more difficult to get an adoption than it is to get an abortion?

Spoiler: Ok there's more (click to show/hide)

As I've said before, I do think that making abortion illegal is a non-starter, because people will find a way to get an abortion regardless.  Aside: I'm going to bet that, throughout history, you have a significant fraction of abortions performed because the family of the girl forced her to to save face, rather than the girl choosing it freely. If you extend this out, I would bet that a vast majority of abortions are because of "stigma" associated with having a child out of wedlock. I would hypothesize that is the number one reason, even above "how can I afford it". Because I tell you what, my grandparents couldn't "afford" to have their 10 kids, and my parents couldn't "afford" to have their mere 3 kids.

Anyway I digress...  the way you fix "abortion" is to remove the stigma associated with having children (consider: "It will destroy your career" is a social statement that basically says that having a child will hold you back, somehow make you "less than" women who don't have children because look at them they have a higher paying career, and you chose to be a "mom" haha.  Yes I have heard people look at my wife strangely because she chose to stop working when our kids were young, and now that they're in school she's started working again.)

For women / couples that really don't think they are capable of raising a child, society should make adoption much much easier. We should be subsidizing that as much or more than we do abortions.

[dragdeler]

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[McTraveller]

I'm sure throughout history women were forced to abort when there was no failsafe option  , what's a shotgun wedding?

I wasn't saying that most pregnancies resulted in pressure to abort. My hypothesis is that a significant (perhaps even a majority) fraction of all abortions are due to social pressure, not "personal choice."  That is, "given the choice to abort was made, what percent was due to general social pressure" and not "given a pregnancy, what is the percentage that was aborted."

ALSO - I suppose the example of shotgun wedding is social pressure on the other side. But remember the shotguns weren't there to force the woman to have the baby - the shotgun was there to "encourage" the male to take responsibility and provide for the woman and likely imminent child*.

Spoiler: Incidentally... (click to show/hide)

This is why some schools of religious thought consider abortion not to be a personal sin but rather a corporate sin.  Because it's the failure of social structures as a whole that gives rise to the desire for and prevalence of such a practice, not just the choices of any particular individual.  Society has set up a systemic environment that puts women in a position where they make that choice, for whatever reason.

Spoiler: *Unfounded speculation (click to show/hide)

The mythos around shotgun weddings is that they typically happened in more rural, poor areas, where abortions were in the more well-to-do social circles to avoid the stigma associated with bastard children.  I don't know how true it is - but it's interesting that in areas where abortions couldn't be afforded, kids were born and then just perhaps had low life expectancy.  I mean I've walked in colonial-era graveyards with tombstones for "baby boy, 1803-1804" and "Baby girl, Aug - Nov 1807" kind of stuff.

In that era society didn't idolize life as much as we do now - and this both made people not flip out as much about death and probably not think about abortion.  In modern society, life is idolized so much people literally bankrupt themselves for an extra month or two of life. The flip side is we also are willing to abort. It's not as dichotomous as it may seem - what "modern" people want is literally the power over life and death itself - we want to choose when life is created and when life ends. We don't want it chosen "at random."

This is actually more at the core of why I personally don't like abortion - it is an example of extreme human hubris about control.

[Folly]

For women / couples that really don't think they are capable of raising a child, society should make adoption much much easier. We should be subsidizing that as much or more than we do abortions.

Adoption is too risky to rush into. Without proper vetting, you have no idea what hell you could be sending that helpless child into.

I think a more effective measure would be large scale state-sponsored child rearing facilities. The current system of utilizing a smattering of loose charity organizations to raise unwanted children is wholly inadequate, considering that we are talking about the developmental years of human beings. We deserve better.
Of course, setting up something proper would mean a tax hike. But good luck tackling any massive humanitarian issue without one.

[dragdeler]

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[MorleyDev]

I said the father's voice should be heard - ie be a factor - and specifically rejected  a father veto. A dialogue should take place.

And you can enforce that...how? Like I said requiring the man to acknowledge they've been considered gives them a veto in all but name since they can just keep claiming they haven't been sufficiently considered, and giving them notification potentially puts the woman at risk if there's a good reason they aren't involving the sperm provider in their decision. Saying "Well it'd be nice" alone does not a legal framework make.

You can be uncomfortable with the father not being consulted in the few cases where they aren't a part of the decision with their partner, sure that's probably a shitty situation for the people involved, but I'd be way more uncomfortable with the problems created by mandating they be consulted.

[McTraveller]

Adoption is too risky to rush into. Without proper vetting, you have no idea what hell you could be sending that helpless child into.

Devil's advocate: Why should there be more vetting for adoption than there is for just having a baby in the first place?

I don't have enough information to know if "state-sponsored child rearing facilities" is something I'd promote.  I'd much rather have community-based systems. Like, you know, maybe have your family and friends or just the families in the local neighborhood help raise kids? Like used to happen?  Yeah yeah "the good old days" and all that.

This is where it gets into politics I suppose: why should it be the government that does this, instead of us as individuals? I don't mean "private industry" here either - I really do just mean "people".


I don't think crosswalks are "controlling life and death" unless you are really doing reductio ad absurdum. It's a continuum.

[dragdeler]

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[Starver]

That *Unfounded speculation might have some basis in fact, but 'colonial era' times were already dangerous enough, mortality-wise. High birth-rates matched (or, indeed, exceeded) high infant-mortality rates with fewer reliable methods of contraception or countering disease and injury.

There always seemed to be enough children becoming young men to sign-up as cannon-/pike-/musket-fodder whenever needed, or hands of any gender till the fields, thread the looms, fuse the shells, etc. With quite prominent exceptions of post-Plague years and equivalent "They're all dead Dave, everybody's dead Dave, everybody's dead..." catastrophes.

Had a child been truly unwanted (or was less than healthy-looking, and a difficult decision might be made) I'm sure there was plenty of scope for nudging the child over into "unfortunately did not survive" territory, to join those that genuinely could not be saved. Once as old as a few months or a year or so, I wouldn't be so quick to suggest that a "fifth trimester abortion" had occured. Standard child neglect or 'carelessness' with the life of an awkward child that might or might not be a valid basis of a (now?) loveless marriage, maybe. (They may not know about genes, but a 'father' might well be enraged once the infant's hair starts to be obviously as red as the handsome cow-herd's...)

I dare say matters could always 'be arranged' for unexpected pregnancies, in all types and levels of society. Young ladies of high standing going to stay with maiden aunts for a few months, or otherwise quietly withdrawn from society, if the right (or willingly substitutive) dashing young officer couldn't be encouraged to step up or whatever. In a poorer rural context, there'd be traditions of working things out any which way that might be just as subtle or tacitly ignored by all the neighbours who had at some point had prior experience of what surely happens fairly most years, once spring has sprung and the young have fun...



Ok, but that's not very AmeriPolly. Not exclusively and topically so, anyway. But it seems there's not much to be said about Trump not conceding that hasn't already been said, and everything else seems to be just as stalemated. Until someone pulls something out of a hat to resolve/ignite the situation in a definite manner.

[Folly]

This is where it gets into politics I suppose: why should it be the government that does this, instead of us as individuals? I don't mean "private industry" here either - I really do just mean "people".

Because people have no oversight, and no transparency. Sometimes it works out just fine, but too often when you trust folks to just be decent it goes horribly awry.
We need to get a board of child-raising experts to agree upon a set of protocols for the care and upbringing of children, and then establish large and transparent facilities dedicated to that cause. Then potential mothers will not have an excuse to seek abortion under the pretense of the child's fate being uncertain; they can hand the child over to the government with confidence that they will be in good hands.

And honestly, I think we should just use public schools for this purpose. They are already glorified daycare centers, providing no practical education in real-world skills; schools exist only to keep kids busy during the day so adults can do adult stuff. Lets take the next step and make them all boarding schools, where kids without parents can stay and be cared for 24/7.

[Bumber]

And honestly, I think we should just use public schools for this purpose. They are already glorified daycare centers, providing no practical education in real-world skills

Is being prepared for a life of soul-crushing, pointless busy work for their capitalist overlords not a real-world skill?