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[Frumple]

I thought it was obvious that I meant more threatened than usual.

It wasn't. If you wanted to make that obvious, use language that doesn't downplay the normal dangers of pregnancy, instead of implying they're not a life-threatening concern. Make it clear you're willing to force people to risk life and limb under common circumstances and punish them if they choose not to. It's seven kinds of frustrating to see the risks and dangers mothers take on to give birth downplayed, and it's something that's damnably rampant in a lot of places.

Still, while it's not something I agree with, for myriad reasons, I'm not going to try to stop someone from holding the belief that at some point a child's birth is worth more than a mother's health to the point coercion and the brutality of the carceral system becomes acceptable. I'd just really prefer folks bloody own that when it's the position they're staking.

And if it's not, well, try to be careful about how you're phrasing things when it comes to an issue this rough

[MaxTheFox]

I thought it was obvious that I meant more threatened than usual.

It wasn't. If you wanted to make that obvious, use language that doesn't downplay the normal dangers of pregnancy, instead of implying they're not a life-threatening concern. Make it clear you're willing to force people to risk life and limb under common circumstances and punish them if they choose not to. It's seven kinds of frustrating to see the risks and dangers mothers take on to give birth downplayed, and it's something that's damnably rampant in a lot of places.

Still, while it's not something I agree with, for myriad reasons, I'm not going to try to stop someone from holding the belief that at some point a child's birth is worth more than a mother's health to the point coercion and the brutality of the carceral system becomes acceptable. I'd just really prefer folks bloody own that when it's the position they're staking.

And if it's not, well, try to be careful about how you're phrasing things when it comes to an issue this rough

Oh I know pregnancy is dangerous. That is why we need better sex ed and contraception, so there would be less need to abort. I, myself, want to have children very much.

[LordBaal]

Abortion is dangerous too, being alive is the most freaking dangerous thing! Everyone ends up dead.

[MaxTheFox]

All diseases actually have a 100% fatality rate, and all substances have an infinitely low LD50.

[McTraveller]

Seriously people. Saying pregnancy is "dangerous" fits the trend of certain demographics escalating the severity of everyday phenomena, which is not a useful stance to take because it clouds what really are severe issues.  The human female body evolved to produce offspring, so whatever risks there are with it, were "evolutionarily acceptable."  So this is what we in the safety industry call "reasonable risk."  It's not "dangerous" like skydiving or driving 100mph or trying to wrestle alligators. "I'm pregnant so my life is in danger" said almost no-one ever until the internet arose.  Now "I'm pregnant so I have to be a bit more conscious of my physical activities and what I eat" yeah I'll give you that.   Saying pregnancy is dangerous is dangerous to society, because it puts a stigma on being pregnant.  "Wow you got pregnant?" and not in the old sense of "out of wedlock", but just in the "oh I can't believe you sacrificed your career to have a kid" sense. Which does happen, let me tell you, which is the nefarious flip side of "oh you have a career and don't have kids?" mentality.

For a given individual yes, risks are higher.  But if pregnancy is so dangerous, why is the life expectancy of women in every actuarial table I've ever seen higher than men?

There are many reasons to debate about the legality of abortion and about how stupid it is to just ban it outright.  But the physical danger of it?  That sounds like grasping at straws and it doesn't enamor the point.

Even to me, when I totally agree that people should have the choice even though (and I'll keep saying it) I think it's a poor choice.

[Frumple]

Like, mate. Evolution considers traumatic insemination acceptable. It considers literally eating your mate acceptable. It considers the reproducing critter dying in the process acceptable. What evolution considers acceptable is a goddamn horrible metric for what is or isn't dangerous. It does not give a single sodden damn about you once you breed a sufficient amount, and it doesn't matter much more than that what condition you're in before or after, so long as you're managing it, so far as evolution is concerned.

Life expectancy for women is higher for a number of reasons, from societal norms leading to safer behavior to less genetic problems to better interpersonal relationships. It wasn't until pretty damn recently, historically, that birth stopped being one of the major causes of death or maiming for women, because evolution will entirely cheerfully fuck someone up in the process of giving birth. It just didn't get mentioned much because people then (and still, in lesser number and sometimes less bluntly) felt entirely comfortable shitting all over women on every front imaginable.

Even with the better practices these days, it's still something that kills even people in otherwise good health, still something that can cripple or permanently injure someone, still something fucking fraught with potential complications that can take months or years to recover from even without more severe consequences. You're safer skydiving than giving birth, near as I can tell from a quick stats reminder pretty damn significantly.

e: seriously, 2020 stats for the US in regards to just fatalities and just live births had it pegged at about 61 times more likely to kill you than skydiving. Alligators kill about one person a year statside, putting wrestling somewhere in the range of several hundred times less likely to kill you than birth, and none of that is getting into other complications.

This is what I mean by downplaying the dangers involved, when someone's listing out more "dangerous" behavior that's wildly less likely to kill a person than giving birth is.

[Il Palazzo]

Dude. There are health risks associated with pregnancy, sure. But putting this in terms of maiming, crippling and killing just to prop up an argument for the right to abortion is some next level wokeness.

[Starver]

Abortion is dangerous too, being alive is the most freaking dangerous thing! Everyone ends up dead.

Spoiler: And radioactive! (click to show/hide)

^{Large pizza, extra sieverts}

( Newly released, https://what-if.xkcd.com/158/ - seemed 'relevent'... )

PPE: But, Il, it is maiming, crippling and killing, potentially for each attempted pregnancy. And some people would like to see half the population (the other half, mostly) going through that risk as many times as possible, so as to roll the dice until there are no more dice to roll. One way or another.

[Frumple]

Il, I'm not trying to do that. The argument for abortion would be damn different. I'm just pretty tired of people downplaying, intentionally or not, the shit mothers have to go through to give birth. It's a problem orthogonal to abortion itself, and ignoring it causes pretty damn significant issues for folks.

It's incredibly common for it to take months to years, even for a relatively uncomplicated birth, for the mother to recover from the literal physical damage involved. Most societies I'm aware of are near bloody silent on that, and they shouldn't be. It's not wokeness, it's wanting to stop goddamn shitting on the realities of what the mothers in our societies are dealing with.

[MaxTheFox]

There needs to be better education regarding contraception to prevent as many unwanted pregnancies as possible, so that the only women who do get pregnant actually want to be. And in any case I support abortion in case of like, rape or incest or medical complications.

[Starver]

But you can't have that. "Government over-reach", dontya know..?!

(i.e. one shouldn't legislate any form of policy over anyone, except of course the ones that disenfranchise the people one thinks are wrong, then it's fair game...)

[Frumple]

There needs to be better education regarding contraception to prevent as many unwanted pregnancies as possible, so that the only women who do get pregnant actually want to be.

Absolutely, and 100% agreement. Better reproductive support in general is desperately needed on a lot of fronts, even beyond all this horseshit currently going on regarding the legal status of abortion.

[Sirus]

Unfortunately for everyone, proper sex education is
A) time-consuming
B) more expensive
C) isn't what Republicans want anyway.

Why bother spending years and tax dollars on teaching young people how to keep themselves safe and healthy when they could be cranking out kids they may not be able to care for?

[JoshuaFH]

Keeping poor people uneducated is the surest way to incline them towards bad decision making which keeps them poor and in their place. And when the uneducated do make decisions that detriment themselves, the wealthier and more powerful people who made the system that made them uneducated in the first place will gladly point at them and put all the blame on them. And thus perpetuate the class hierarchy.

[EuchreJack]

Personally, I think the Government should put contraceptives in the drinking water, and mandate it's inclusion in all beverages. The antidote can only be obtained via prescription from your Doctor.

It neatly sidesteps the whole abortion issue. It also leads to an unacceptable population decline.