A secular debate about abortion

[Tero]

And you don't even have a king or queen anymore to hold up antiquated values!

[Seth]

Ireland still in the dark ages? Bigoted, anti-woman? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23277590

Yes. We still need abortion available for women carrying children with fatal foetal anomalies and the morning after pill available without having to be grilled by doctors.

There's an argument there for more freely available abortion in the early stages too, I'm sure.

It might be a surprise, but I agree with you in main, though I continue to disfavor abortion as being a harmful sop to irresponsible sexual behavior.

[Blind groper]

I think, Seth, that in that statement, you are making a cause and effect assumption that is not valid.

People do not engage in sex because abortion provides a way out. They engage in sex because millions of years of evolution has made them as randy as rabid weasels!

[Hermit]

I think, Seth, that in that statement, you are making a cause and effect assumption that is not valid.

People do not engage in sex because abortion provides a way out. They engage in sex because millions of years of evolution has made them as randy as rabid weasels!

Seth was not referring to engagement in sex. He objected to irresponsible sexual behavior, which he apparently thinks is more prevalent because of the availability of abortion.

[Seth]

I think, Seth, that in that statement, you are making a cause and effect assumption that is not valid.

People do not engage in sex because abortion provides a way out. They engage in sex because millions of years of evolution has made them as randy as rabid weasels!

Wrong. Except for the mentally deranged every human being on the planet is fully capable of deciding not to have voluntary sex.

Rape is another matter, but even the rapist can make a decision not to rape. We are not animals driven by oestrus and a lack of individual control over sexual urges. We choose to have sex, which means we can choose NOT to have sex. And we can also choose to bear the consequences of having sex without complaining about the choices we freely made. Or we can choose to visit our irresponsibility and selfishness on the living human being inside the mother through abortion.

And many people DO engage in sex because they have abortion as a fail-safe contraceptive backup. That much is well known. Indeed no small number engage in unprotected sex precisely because they can go to the corner abortionist to terminate a pregnancy.

[Seth]

I think, Seth, that in that statement, you are making a cause and effect assumption that is not valid.

People do not engage in sex because abortion provides a way out. They engage in sex because millions of years of evolution has made them as randy as rabid weasels!

Seth was not referring to engagement in sex. He objected to irresponsible sexual behavior, which he apparently thinks is more prevalent because of the availability of abortion.

It's unquestionably more prevalent because of the availability of abortion and of contraceptives. The teenage pregnancy rate prior to the 1960s was low and going down, but when The Pill was released, the rate of teenage pregnancy literally skyrocketed and has stayed high ever since.

The consequence of having to carry, deliver and raise a baby was a persuasive argument against irresponsible sex right up until abortion and contraception appeared to reduce the risk of pregnancy. Now kids use condoms (15% or greater failure rate) and pills (minimum 1% failure rate) thinking that they cannot get pregnant (but they do) and their irresponsibility is magnified by the girl's ability to get an abortion on demand if everything else fails. No consequences leads to irresponsible behavior.

[Hermit]

I think, Seth, that in that statement, you are making a cause and effect assumption that is not valid.

People do not engage in sex because abortion provides a way out. They engage in sex because millions of years of evolution has made them as randy as rabid weasels!

Seth was not referring to engagement in sex. He objected to irresponsible sexual behavior, which he apparently thinks is more prevalent because of the availability of abortion.

It's unquestionably more prevalent because of the availability of abortion and of contraceptives. The teenage pregnancy rate prior to the 1960s was low and going down, but when The Pill was released, the rate of teenage pregnancy literally skyrocketed and has stayed high ever since.

The consequence of having to carry, deliver and raise a baby was a persuasive argument against irresponsible sex right up until abortion and contraception appeared to reduce the risk of pregnancy. Now kids use condoms (15% or greater failure rate) and pills (minimum 1% failure rate) thinking that they cannot get pregnant (but they do) and their irresponsibility is magnified by the girl's ability to get an abortion on demand if everything else fails. No consequences leads to irresponsible behavior.

Unquestionably?

[Hermit]

Present me with an actual fact and I'll acknowledge it, though I may well, and often do take issue with how a particular fact is used in context and whether that particular fact supports the argument it's cited in favor of.

Well? You've spent a fair bit of time on this forum, pontificating in a dozen or more posts elsewhere since I posted the above. Looks like you chose the "ignore" option of the five you normally employ.

[Seth]

Present me with an actual fact and I'll acknowledge it, though I may well, and often do take issue with how a particular fact is used in context and whether that particular fact supports the argument it's cited in favor of.

Well? You've spent a fair bit of time on this forum, pontificating in a dozen or more posts elsewhere since I posted the above. Looks like you chose the "ignore" option of the five you normally employ.

I'm still fact-checking.

[Hermit]

The ones I provided are from "the centers for disease control and prevention/national center for health statistics" site. It'll be interesting to see where yours come from if they "prove" that "the teenage pregnancy rate prior to the 1960s was low and going down, but when The Pill was released, the rate of teenage pregnancy literally skyrocketed and has stayed high ever since."

[Warren Dew]

Hermit, your graph is for teen birth rate, not teen pregnancy rate.

Not that the pregnancy rate is relevant to Seth's argument anyway. With the advent of the pill, "irresponsible" sex could have increased tenfold and pregnancy could still have decreased. I strongly suspect effective, inexpensive contraception has increased recreational sex.

I rather doubt abortion has increased it, however. People who think about their sex enough to try to avoid a pregnancy are going to use contraception, rather than depending on the rather traumatic experience of an abortion.

[Hermit]

Hermit, your graph is for teen birth rate, not teen pregnancy rate.

Read Seth's assertion again. No, don't bother looking for it. I'll quote it for you: "The consequence of having to carry, deliver and raise a baby was a persuasive argument against irresponsible sex right up until abortion and contraception appeared to reduce the risk of pregnancy." [my emphasis]

Not that the pregnancy rate is relevant to Seth's argument anyway. With the advent of the pill, "irresponsible" sex could have increased tenfold and pregnancy could still have decreased.

What is your definition of irresponsible sex, then?

[Seth]

Hermit, your graph is for teen birth rate, not teen pregnancy rate.

Read Seth's assertion again. No, don't bother looking for it. I'll quote it for you: "The consequence of having to carry, deliver and raise a baby was a persuasive argument against irresponsible sex right up until abortion and contraception appeared to reduce the risk of pregnancy." [my emphasis]

Pregnancy.
Recent declines in teen birthrates, then, are
attributable to reductions in pregnancy rates. In the
1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. teen pregnancy rates
rose....

Source: Guttmacher Institute

Given this information, I have to amend my statement somewhat. While teenage pregnancies and births are down, except for a jump in the 70s and 80s, the unmarried pregnancy/delivery rate is up enormously. Moreover, the purpose of my statement, which I admit was not clear, is that more teenagers are having irresponsible sex today than they did in the 1960s BECAUSE abortion and contraception are available. This I believe is still true even if the number of deliveries itself is down.

Both abortion and contraception clearly provide license for sexual activity among young persons.

Chapter One
THE STUDY, THE CONTEXT, AND THE FINDINGS IN BRIEF
By Rebecca A. Maynard

Each year, about 1 million teenagers in the United States—approximately 10 percent of all 15- to 19-year-old women—become pregnant. Of these pregnancies only 13 percent are intended. The U.S. teen pregnancy rate is more than twice as high as that in any other advanced country and almost 10 times as high as the rate in Japan or the Netherlands. About a third of these teens abort their pregnancies, 14 percent miscarry, and 52 percent (or more than half a million teens) bear children, 72 percent of them out of wedlock. Of the half a million teens who give birth each year, roughly three-quarters are giving birth for the first time. Over 175,000 of these new mothers are age 17 or younger.

Source

Not that the pregnancy rate is relevant to Seth's argument anyway. With the advent of the pill, "irresponsible" sex could have increased tenfold and pregnancy could still have decreased.

What is your definition of irresponsible sex, then?

Mine is having sex before you are fully prepared to have and raise a child in a stable two-parent home where the family is not dependent on public largess for their economic support, should you get pregnant.

Also, unmarried teenagers having sex while wrongfully thinking that pills and condoms are infallible, and those who resort to abortion because they were unprepared to accept the consequences of having sex.

[Hermit]

While teenage pregnancies and births are down, except for a jump in the 70s and 80s, the unmarried pregnancy/delivery rate is up enormously.

Oh! How scandalous. So you say, sex before marriage is actually happening? Wow! Tell me; how long has this been going on for?

What is your definition of irresponsible sex, then?

Mine is having sex before you are fully prepared to have and raise a child in a stable two-parent home where the family is not dependent on public largess for their economic support, should you get pregnant.

So, is marriage necessary for that condition to be met? If not, why bring up the unmarried pregnancy/delivery rate?

FFS, you sound like a christian, or for that matter a muslim fundamentalist.

In summary: You began by asserting that irresponsible sexual behaviour is unquestionably more prevalent because of the availability of abortion and of contraceptives. The teenage pregnancy rate prior to the 1960s was low and going down, but when The Pill was released, the rate of teenage pregnancy literally skyrocketed and has stayed high ever since. Lacking any means to counter the fact that the teenage pregnancy rate has plummeted since the availability of abortion and of contraceptives, you retreat to saying, erm, what precisely? Oh, I know. This: Irresponsible sexual behaviour is unquestionably more prevalent despite the fact that the teenage pregnancy rate has plummeted since the availability of abortion and of contraceptives.

As for the stable two-parent home, historically this is what the lack of contraception and abortion does for the wellbeing of children:

[Warren Dew]

Hermit, your graph is for teen birth rate, not teen pregnancy rate.

Read Seth's assertion again. No, don't bother looking for it. I'll quote it for you: "The consequence of having to carry, deliver and raise a baby was a persuasive argument against irresponsible sex right up until abortion and contraception appeared to reduce the risk of pregnancy." [my emphasis]

The relevant part of what Seth wrote was actually:

The teenage pregnancy rate prior to the 1960s was low and going down, but when The Pill was released, the rate of teenage pregnancy literally skyrocketed and has stayed high ever since.

Notice how Seth uses the word "pregnancy", while you presented data on "birth" rates. The two are not the same, as illustrated here:

The middle line is the teen birth rate, which is the same as the middle line in your graph, except this graph happens to start in 1972. Notice how the birth rate fell during the 1970s, but the pregnancy rate did the opposite: it increased.

The facts actually do support the part of Seth's statement that the rate of teenage pregnancy - not births, pregnancy - skyrocketed when the pill was released. The part they do not support is the part about it staying high ever since - the teen pregnancy rate actually leveled out around 1980, and then fell steadily from the early 1990s onward.