"Going" downhill?

https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attack...

"Since 1977 there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons targeted at abortion clinics and providers across the United States. In some cases, a small group of clinics have been targeted multiple times."

I mean, that is terrible, but abortion clinics commit millions of murders each year according to pro-lifers, so your comment falls on deaf ears.

Globally? In the United States, this is not true[1]. Anti-choicers can claim whatever they want but we still shouldn't be repeating false data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_Uni...

From your own link... from 1978 to 1997, there were more than a million abortions each year.

But... now that we know abortion clinics only murder a few hundred thousand, that makes them like twice as good as they used to be. That's how this works, right?

Looking at the data with compassion, I would say that access to abortion didn't result in more abortions. In fact, the opposite occurred; access to abortions appears to have reduced the abortion rate over the long term. So if you are truly pro-life, then you would want abortion to be very easy to access; this will save (prevent the "murder" as you say) babies by the millions. Obviously it isn't access alone, though, probably the real cause is that increased access to abortion comes with increased sex education and access to birth control for women, which in turn lowers the rate of unexpected pregnancies, which in turn lowers the rate of abortions. Now if only we could all agree on improving sex ed!

By that logic we should kill poor people who may go on to have abortions

They forget all the manslaughter by mothers who miscarry, plus all the fratricide when one twin absorbs another. It's a god damn slaughter in America's uteruses!

And fertility clinics commit even more. Yet no one talks about them.

The Catholic church, the largest pro-life organization, is pretty vehemently against IVF, in all cases, for any reason. It talks about them quite often, but there is little support for it outside the church (most protestant denoms do not agree with the catholics here), so it receives very little mainstream attention. However, within the 'Catholic bubble', fertility clinics probably get as much ire.

> The Catholic church, the largest pro-life organization, is pretty vehemently against IVF, in all cases, for any reason.

Note that the Catholic heirarchy is, in fact, opposed to all forms of conception that don't involve a sex act between married partners, including homologous artificial insemination within marriage.

> However, within the 'Catholic bubble', fertility clinics probably get as much ire.

They really don't; they rarely get mentioned outside of fairly academic discussions of the relevant theology, even by most of the people within the Church that engage in intense advocacy on abortion and/or family issues.

They do get some ire by extremists on the opposite side of the heirarchy’s position than the general society, the types that put out pamphlets or go on Catholic radio using arguments like “clones—and IVF babies—have no souls” (seriously). But they don't get a lot of attention in mainstream circles. If a couple asks their pastor about it, they’ll probably have the official positioned mentioned, but unlike abortion it's not something you're likely to hear mentioned in a Sunday sermon or as the focus of a heirarchy-led public advocacy campaign.

What about embryos that aren't implanted? That just don't make it naturally? 1 in 3 eggs don't make it for every kne that does. Does the Catholic church want to do anything about those? I quick Google search didn't bring anything up.

> 1 in 3 eggs don't make it for every kne that does. Does the Catholic church want to do anything about those?

The Catholic heirarchy views that no differently than other natural death, which, while it might be something better to reduce, is not an active moral wrong the way homicide (including, in the view of the heirarchy, direct abortion) is.

(I say “heirarchy” rather than “Church” here because the evidence suggest that the mass of the faithful, the body of the Church, aren't particularly in line behind the heirarchy on this issue—polls in the US, for instance, fairly consistently see virtually no difference in distribution of political views on abortion between Catholics and Americans generally.)

The church would support medicines to help these children implant and make it. However, it is also the same as natural death (trying to increase the chance of non-implantation is the same sin as abortion). Speaking from personal experience with our recurrent miscarriages, Catholic doctors cared the most, and ultimately, their diligence and dedication is why we have our daughter. The rest told us to just forget about it. The Catholic ones cared, and are why we have living children.

Perhaps instead of "pro life", a better moniker would be "forced birth"

That would make sense if both parents were the only ones facing equal repercussions but alas an innocent child potentially has to suffer in the process.

Taking responsibility for being raped?

Just to recap:

-One person lamented discourse relating to abortion "going downhill".

-Someone pointed out that its hard to say its going downhill when its been happening since the 70s.

Your takeaway:

"SO YOU THINK ALL PEOPLE WHO ARE PRO LIFE DO THIS?"

Its simply impossible to have those inputs and create this output without having a massive, obvious agenda. Maybe take that elsewhere?

I believe that pcj50's point is that the debate has not been "going" downhill. It's been down, at the very bottom, for a very long time, and there's nowhere further down to go (short of a real shooting civil war).

The most I've ever seen it evoke from pro-lifers is something along the lines of "ya hate to see it"

Unborn babies are always biologically distinguishable from babies that are already born. Unborn babies haven't yet taken a breath, have not been exposed to light, and still gather nutrients from the placenta. Inflation of the lungs happens immediately after birth, among a cascade of other events that happen quickly following birth, clearly distinguishing an unborn baby from a born baby.

> Inflation of the lungs happens immediately after birth, among a cascade of other events that happen quickly following birth, clearly distinguishing an unborn baby from a born baby.

But like literally none of this happens in the case of premature enough babies who often need intubation, and yet who -- if intentionally killed -- would trigger a murder investigation

i feel like this may be equivocating on "biologically distinguishable", particularly given the chosen examples.

So we can freely kill people who haven't seen light?

However forcing someone to carry a baby to term is also morally problematic. Even non-life-threatening births carry risks of bodily harm.

Not to mention the psychological trauma of carrying a child that can be "safely" birthed but will immediately begin a slow, painful death after leaving the womb. This is the typical case for most so-called "late term abortions" that everyone clutches their pearls over.

Anyway, I find people's thinking around the morals of abortion to be quite fluid . The termination rate of pregnancies with chromosomal abnormalities far exceeds the percentage of people who identify as "pro choice" and cannot be explained simply by pro-choice people being more prone to fetuses with such conditions.

> However forcing someone to carry a baby to term is also morally problematic

There are plenty of pro-choice arguments, but this is not a very good one.

Coercion is often justifiably used when lives are at stake. For example, the government might "force" sick people in a quarantine given an epidemic outbreak. What you want to show is that the fetus is not a person and, therefore, doesn't have the same rights as the mother. This is difficult, but not impossible -- although there are some concessions that need to be made along the way.

Justification for mid-to-late-term abortions is further mired that it's becoming increasingly more difficult for women to have access to early-term abortion services, thus forcing them into mid-to-late-term abortions.

> Your inflammatory pseudo-counter-argument doesn't change the fact that abortion in cases of non-life-threatening births remains morally problematic.

Says the person who has the need to argue about what women can and can't do with their bodies while not having a uterus himself.

As a trained philosopher, I'm inclined to be as charitable as possible, and even though you make a valid point, yours is quite a weak argument. For example, I'm not a soldier, but I can still posit that engaging in combat with non-military civilians is not morally justifiable.

I can make these kinds of arguments by analogy or generalization. So I hope you can see how (and more importantly why) we can think about morally-difficult problems like abortion even though we're not women, war even though we're not soldiers, etc.

I agree.

The discourse in your country doesn't seem to revolve about facts any more. At the moment it's just political. I'm wondering why this is on HN at all. We all know whatever is going to be said about this topic is going to be political eventually.

(wow fastest downvote ever, I just posted this, like 5 seconds, and it already got a downvote :)

Agreed on all points. I've lurked HN forever and consider it one of my very few feel-good places online. This post, and (already) some of the comments are not appropriate to my understanding of the site.

Edit: to be clear, by "feel-good" I do not mean "positive," emotionally, just not subject to the same level of useless vitriol common elsewhere--which is where this thread is going.

The US is just much much larger than all other Western democracies. Sensitive topics are going to be much more political and take their time to resolve. It's like comparing how a group of 10 people resolve issues versus a group of 300. The dynamics are very different given the information asymmetry.