Why are some pro-life people against a pregnant woman ceasing to support the life of her baby, but resent giving money to support feeding the child after birth?

Please provide supporting evidence/citations that “pro-lifers” don’t want to support the basic needs of children.

@robmandu I said some. My only evidence is people who live around me who resent paying any taxes, and want to let county hospitals close down, and think it is every man for himself.

@robmandu If you are pro-life (and I am not assuming anything) but if you are, and you are fine paying to support these children, then you do not fit the question. I completely accept that.

@robmandu: If I understand the question correctly, I think @JLeslie might be referring to extreme conservatives who don’t support a woman’s right to choose and want to do away with welfare. It seems counterproductive to prevent a woman who either lacks motivation or money to raise a child from aborting a pregnancy and then saying, “Well, you’re stuck with the child and don’t expect any help from us.”

Seems like an unnecessarily binary framework for discussion to me.

a) pro-life people who don’t want to help anyone
– vs -
b) indigent mothers and their children

There’s way more going on that just that.

Yes, @KatawaGrey is reinforcing the ideaw with his explanation. I tend to be kind of conservative on welfare, and related policies, but I hear people say things like “get a job” and “they are not going to pay for someone else to be lazy.” Forget about that not all people on welfare are lazy or want to be out of work, but lets say a portion of them are. Let’s say a woman knows she is not going to work to make a decent living, or knows her skill set is not in large demand right now, and knows especially it will be difficult to support a child financially, then if the state is going to force her to have the baby, should they be obligated to help support it? Or, stand around hopeful the mother gets more motivated or finds a job in a bad job market. What if the mother is the one being the ost realistic about her financial abilities.

@robmandu Mothers who don’t want to be mothers and were willing to not be mothers.

So, adoption, education, and assistance from friends, family, and church are all off the table for this discussion, right?

@robmandu: I would think so, yes. If you do not want to give birth, you don’t want to give birth. often, it is not just about who can raise the child, it is about pregnancy as well. Also, it is much more expensive for the state to help pay for a child whose mother cannot afford to raise him/her than it is for the state to pay for an abortion.

@robmandu Adoption definitely off the table for the purposes of this discussion. I don’t see how you can realistically force friends, family or church to support the baby. who is going to force them, the government?

I’m not advocating a pro- or anti- anything here.

Just trying to establish the unrealistic, polarizing aspects of this faux debate.

Y’all have fun.

@robmandu Are you saying that the type of person I describe doesn’t exist? And, I am not looking or a debate, I am looking for how that person thinks about it. I want to hear their opinions, and ask questions to clarify their thought process, so I understand better. As I said in the original question I do not want anyone to attack the pro-life people who are willing to share their thoughts.

I can’t tell you that, because it has never made any sense to me.

It seems that to many pro-lifers, life begins with conception or even before it, but it ends at birth. Once born, each poor sucker is on his or her own, and they are pro capital punishment, pro war, pro letting those not bright enough to win at king of the mountain starve.

@JLeslie this is a very big issue. I’d like you to refer back to the article we discussed a few months back by Dr. David Lykken.
I once stopped and addressed a group of Southern Baptists who were picketing an abortion clinic. I lived in Gulfport, MS for three years. I told them that stopping the young female from having an abortion is not enough and they should put their money where their mouths were. The problem would still exist for this female. I believe the Chinese have a saying that he who saves a life is responsible for it. Very apt when you think about it. These
people are playing god, making life and death decisions, then going home and patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves for saving a life. But what life will this child have? Statistically, it will be born into a single-parent, low-income household and will have the deck stacked against it from the start. It will be at high risk for low self esteem, poor academics, mental and physical health issues, depression, substance use/abuse, truancy, risk taking behaviours, poor life choice making skills, inability to pick up on and process oial cues, inappropriate anger response reflex. These are just a few, the list is much longer. These same people will be advocating stricter sentencing and punishment for the children that they insisted on saving fifteen years ago.
I realize that this is an over-simplification, but it does cover some of the bases. I think that it is like so many other things in our society of people jumping on this or that band wagon. A lack of critical thought. A refusal to look at an issue from any other view point than their own narrow scocpe.
@robmandu “So, adoption, education, and assistance from friends, family, and church are all off the table for this discussion, right?” This is an unrealaistic expectation and does not address the whole scope of raising a child.

@Trillian How did the Southern Baptists respond?

They mostly ignored me, but the minister (I think, he was the portly man in who seemed to be in charge anyway) took me aside and told me that he appreciated my concern but that I needed to go away. He said that they were doing the Lord’s work. I mentioned that the lord wnted them to love their neighbor as themselves, and that a man who drives a widow from her home is worse than in infidel. That didn’t seem to go over too well, but he just said that I was not helping anyone by being there. I think he was afraid that some of his people might think I was making sense and agree with me. I went, because I don’t like to try to force others to my way of thinking, but I do like to point out what I view as damnfool notions when I see them. I had driven by them several times and finally just decided to stop. Like I said, lack of critical thought.
I approached a group of Catholics once years ago when The Last Temptation of Christ first aired. They were carrying signs and all of them had rosary beds they were praying on. I just asked them what they objected to, but none of them would answer me. I remember the signs each had one word like “Blasphemy” and “Lies”.

They can’t starve unless they are first given the chance to starve. They can’t succeed unless they are first given the chance to succeed.

I’ll take my chances.

For me, at least, the trouble lies with those people who would abuse the assistance. My mother’s father’s second wife’s daughter from a previous marriage (seriously!) has kids so that she can keep getting welfare checks, so that she can keep laying around the house doing nothing. As in, barely even bothering to make sure that the kids are fed. It’s quite vexing, knowing that a small chunk of my every paycheck is going to feed her vices, and those of a million others like her.

On the other hand, the fact that those kids are doing as well as they are is a testament to the value of having a lot of extended family.

My guess is that the people that you talk about in the OP, @JLeslie, would rather the support come from the family or the church, as in older days. I believe that Fluther catalogues elsewhere the relative merits of state sponsorship vs. individual initiative.

@Nullo There’s no question that some people will abuse assistance if it’s there to take. We should do all we can to design a system that makes that impossible. We did transition from Welfare to Workfare under Clinton.

But my perception is that the proverbial “Welfare Queen” is more a fiction to assuage the guilt of those who would prefer to not be taxed to help anyone else than a reality that is dragging the country down. Everybody may be able to find one example, but that is not a picture of the whole of America.

In the last 30 years, the transfer of wealth so often trotted out by Cons has been happening, but not in the direction they claim. Instead, the bottom 60% has lost ground in terms of real, inflation-adjusted income. The next 30% have just held even. Only the top 10% have gotten richer and the top 1% have gotten fabulously wealthier. The wealthiest 1% now own over ⅓rd of everything in the USA. The last time the top 1% got their hands on that much of the nation’s wealth was in 1928, and look what that brought on.

Realistically, we are going to have people in a competitive, technological society who are either too low in intelligence or in physical abilities to fend for themselves. We are going to have children born into households where the income is too low to give them much chance to pull themselves u by the bootstraps, because they can’t afford boots. We have to decide whether welfare for billionaires is so important that we can just let the poor and disadvantaged go homeless and starve, or whether billionaires don’t need our help as much as children born to single, poor women.

@Nullo Thank you for joining the discussion, I know it is a risk :). Yes, I understand that the pro-life, anti govt assistance (I don’t know what to call them, I don’t want to be offensive, I am not judging, just trying to see how it makes sense to them) want people to be responsible for their own lives and for their children, I want the same. But, I think we also have to acknowledge reality, not just what our ideal is. Let’s say the mom basically is a deadbeat, what about the reality of that? I think some of the mothers are not deadbeats, but maybe going through a hard time, that can happen to anyone, but sometimes they are never going to rise to the occasion. And the woman who wants better for her children and has hit a bad time, her life will be more difficult with more mouths to feed, and harder to get out of a bad situation.

I had a Catholic friend tell me that her priest said we should give our children siblings, that we should not worry about money and material things, that siblings are the best gift you could give your children. Like, the most important thing is creating life, no matter what the lives of those children will be, or how it might take away opportunities from the children already born into the family, and also to ignore a woman who feels she is done, and does not desire a larger family. Now, most of my Catholic friends do use birth control, at minimum rhythm method (which I count as birth control) but it demonstrated disregard for quality of life in my opinion on the part of the Priest.

I think that is part of the disconnect, I have always thought in terms of quality of life. Abortion related to severe abnormalities or genetic disease, euthanasia, letting a baby born extremely premie pass away if they are destined to have severe disability, all of these I think I would let go, but I think others were hold on tight to life. So, I was not necessarily referring to these extreme cases in my question, but they count too.

@Trillian The Southern Baptist church that I belong to has several programs set up to help children. Almost all churches that I know of have programs that support children. I would love to know the name of this “group of Southern Baptists who were picketing an abortion clinic” that you speak of. The pastor in charge may not have told you what you wanted to hear but if you attended his service, I bet there were programs for children. One of my best friends teaches a class called MOPS. Mothers of preschoolers. No affiliation with the church is needed to attend these classes and thousands of dollars are spent on these women and children.

People having multiple children to get more welfare is another story. Trust me, this goes on all the time.

I myself have an adopted child that I sponsor financially. I have never laid eyes on the child except pictures and she has no idea who I am. She has a family that can’t afford her, but didn’t want to abort her. She will start high school in two years.

No all Southern Baptists are a callous as the ones you describe and I would bet you only got part of their story. Picketing an abortion clinic is dangerous and IF you showed up in an argumentative or confrontational way, the pastor was probably trying to defuse what he saw as a possible situation. He may have been an ass…but I doubt it.

@missingbite Wow, defensive much? If you want to call me a liar, you’re cetainly entitled to think what you wish. I was certainly not argumentative or confrontational, just logical. And I certainly never made any of the broad sweeping generalizatios that you are saying, merely relating one experience that I had. I didn’t act in any way differently than I would have stoping at a roadside vegetable or fruit stand. Just got out of the car and said hello and asked a couple of qustions. Nicely.
But I can see that you have the concept of “confrotational” downpat. Well done. You make a very good witness for your lord. I’m sure he’s up in heaven right now applauding you,

@robmandu “unrealistic, polarizing aspects of this faux debate” that’s how it’s always posed by many (not all) pro-lifers – it’s all or nothing…the way I hear it is save the unborn life regardless of its future suffering or the suffering of its mothers…suffering is not a sin but abortion is.

Where someone insists that others live by their beliefs, the issue at hand is control not values or morals.

@missingbite I certainly salute your support of the needy teen, and your church’s outreach to the needy in your community. But that doesn’t address the heart of this debate because the fact is there are tens of millions of Americans that aren’t reached by any such program and are in serious need. Even the “Welfare Queens” Cons so love to hate are often, if you take the trouble to get to know them, either of such low IQ, or sparse education, or so severely depressed that they truly can’t just man up and get a job.

The most recent statistics on adoption and foster care I could find were from 2000. At that time, there were over half a million children in long-term foster care in the US, and of them 117,000 were available for adoption. If churches in the US really care about life after birth, then switch the focus from stopping abortions to making sure all kids that need a good home have one and families that need help providing a decent childhood for their kids are actually able to do so. Then maybe we could restrict abortion to cases of incest, rape or where continuing the pregnancy poses a serious threat to the life of the mother.

@ETpro No need to give in on that last point.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I’d truly like to see abortions happening as seldom as possible while keeping them legal and available at least until the child would be viable outside the womb. But as long as babies brought into this world in bad circumstances run a significant risk of bouncing from one to another foster home, often being cared for by Foster Queens who only take them in for the money, and then getting dumped into an adult world they are completely unprepared to compete in, I am against any limits. Let the mother decide.

Because murder is wrong.
Because people should have babies when they are married and financially stable.

I have a similar beef. Why do so many hardcore pro-life activists who also want draconian welfare reform refuse any funding and try to get any birth control services shut down? If abortion is so terrible because the life and welfare of the unborn child is sacred, why isn’t the life and welfare of the breathing child as sacred?

I’ve also heard many pro-life activists say that it’s OK to have an abortion if you’re raped, because it’s not your fault you got pregnant. Then I wonder, why does the status of the fetus suddenly seem to change when it’s not the mother’s “fault” that she got pregnant? It almost makes it sound like pregnancy is some sort of punishment for sinning.

I think the real issue sometimes is that they want to legislate morality. You can’t make it illegal for for people to have sex outside marriage—no matter how much you’d like to.

I’m sure there are many people who are pro-life who donate money and give their time to help single mothers in need and children. But this is a philosophical question for those who don’t help, and even if they do help have to realize that a single church only reaches so many people. A pregnant woman is sustaining the fetus’ life. Pro-life will not let her disconnect, will not let her out of physically requiring her body to support the life. If the government is going to act on the part of pro-life then doesn’t the government bare some responsibility to make sure the child continues to be safe and fed? Is it we just wait for the mother to be a horrible mom and neglet the baby and have the government take the baby or child away? Most mothers won’t be so horrible that the state needs to remove their child. But, plenty of children grow up in pretty bad situations. Of course there are mothers who did not plan children and wind up to be great mom’s, they are not part of this discussion, I don’t want anyone to take this as offensive towards single moms who had unplanned pregnancies, this is about women who want to abort and would not be allowed to. I would include in t hemotehrs who want to abort, not only women who feel unprepared to be mothers, but mothers who want babies but their fetus has a sever abnormality. When they are forced to go through with their pregnancies, is the government going to pay for all of the medical care, maybe send in some caregivers so the mother gets a break every so often?

Actually @keobooks is kind of on to what I am talking about by bringing up a separate talking about. Why is ok to abbort a pregnancy due to rape? Why is that exception made if the baby is still an innocent life?

A pregnant woman is sustaining the fetus’ life. Pro-life will not let her disconnect, will not let her out of physically requiring her body to support the life.

Despite the fact that we don’t force anyone else to physically support another person’s life.

“For our law to compel the defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change the very concept and principle upon which our society is founded. To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual, and would impose a rule which would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn… For a society, which respects the rights of one individual, to sink its teeth into the jugular vein or neck of one of its members and suck from it sustenance for another member, is revolting to our hard-wrought concept of jurisprudence. [Forcible] extraction of living body tissue causes revulsion to the judicial mind. Such would raise the specter of the swastika and the inquisition, reminiscent of the horrors this portends. ”
-McFall v. Shimp, 1978

@JLeslie There are those who do not approve of abortion, even subsequent to rape.

I think that this whole issue comes down to idealism vs. realism. Ideally, there would be no abortions because nobody would be behaving stupidly with regards to reproduction. Realistically, there are a lot of foolish people in the world, many of which want to be able to behave foolishly without having to deal with the consequences.
For some reason, our educational institutions teach that it’s okay to behave foolishly.

My take: Sex is structured around reproduction. If you don’t feel ready to handle the responsibilities of parenthood, you shouldn’t be trying for it.

@Dr_Dredd You are conflating morality with legality.

@Nullo idealism vs realism, I agree.

Yes, I realize some pro-life people are not ok with abortion in the case of a rape, I understand that pro-life is varied just like pro-choice people. but the ones that are ok in the case of rape, how does that make sense to them? The only thing I can figure is the raped girl did nothing wrong and should not have to live with the consequence, but the promiscuous girl acted irresponsibly and thus should have no out. Is that the case?

Your comment to @Dr_Dredd the point is people want to legislate what they think is moral, In this case the fetus being more important than the mother, even more important than my neighbor if he needed a blood transfusion. I don’t have to give him anything if he needs blood, a kidney, bone marrow, I can watch him die legally, even if I have the power to help save his life with my life. And, what matters is the law, if it did not matter the pro-life people could just apply their rules to their families and themselves, and leave the law alone as it is.

@Trillian I never called you a liar. All I said was that you most likely didn’t get the whole story from the pastor. I’m sure you can imagine the tense situation that picketing an abortion clinic can bring. Even simple questions at that kind of an event can and have led to fights. You lecturing him “that the lord wnted them to love their neighbor as themselves, and that a man who drives a widow from her home is worse than in infidel” could have come across as confrontational. Maybe not. He had to be the judge of that.

@ETpro I would bet that most churches everywhere have programs set up for the needy. I could be wrong. I’ll check with my pastor as he would know. I know for a fact that the city that I live in has multiple churches with these programs and yet attendance is relatively low. Like I said before, no church affiliation is needed. You simply have to ask for help. Most don’t. We can’t drag people in.

As far as foster children, you are correct that more people need to step up and help. From my limited knowledge of the foster care system, it seems to be broken.

You are also correct that many of the Welfare Queens are of low IQ. Many are not.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s solo career began in 1995, making him the second member of the Wu-Tang Clan to release a solo album, following Method Man’s 1994 effort, Tical. Released on March 28, 1995, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version spawned the hit singles “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”, which helped propel the album to platinum status. The album’s sound was as raw and gritty as 36 Chambers, producer RZA creating beats even more minimalist and stripped-down than on the group’s debut.
That same year, he was featured on the remix of Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy”.
Around this time, Jones gained notoriety when, as he was being profiled for an MTV biography, he took two of his thirteen children by limousine to a New York State welfare office to pick up his welfare check while his latest album was still in the top ten of the US charts. The entire incident was filmed by an MTV camera crew and was broadcast nationwide.

@missingbite You can ask your pastor. He may know what a few churches are doing, but it should be obvious that he doesn’t know what the entire religious community in all denominations throughout the entire USA are doing. If he answers as if he does, he is not a man to be trusted.

I know from first-hand experience with one fabulously successful evangelical church what they used the funds they collected for. The money made the pastor who founded the church and its satellite churches fabulously rich. I also know he is not the exception that proves the rule. The Bible itself warns of those who use religion solely for their own enrichment. See 2 Timothy 3:1–5.

I know there are abuses of welfare. I know there are true Welfare Queens who milk the system because they are lazy but are plenty capable of living without public assistance. We should improve the system to find these people and either purge them from welfare assistance if they are honestly just being lazy, or prosecute them for fraud if they are ineligible (as in the example of the Hip Hop star ODB).

But the right trots out a pet example Welfare Fraudster every time the subject comes up, and the implication is that every single person who is receiving public assistance is just like the one example. Nothing could be further from the truth. And why is the right obsessed with getting rid of welfare, privatizing Social Security and limiting Medicare? Because the people behind the movement, the people who pay for the think tanks filled with PhDs and media mavens that invent the talking points and the examples of this and that abuse, are the wealthy elite that want more tax cuts and privileges for themselves. They want more no-bid contracts for their corporations. And they can’t have more money from the federal spigot if a bunch of poor people are sucking on it too.

That is what they are duping the Christian right into working so hard for, welfare ONLY for the wealthiest Americans. I have to think Jesus would not have supported that effort.

It also bears mentioning that there are those who don’t mind supporting a young mother – the struggling young mother is an archetype that holds entire fistfuls of heartstrings – but would rather be given the option to be charitable instead of having their money slurped up, passed around the bureaucracy, and a remainder spat out into welfare budgets.

I knew a woman once – a mother of two – whose husband either was or became a useless person, leaving her to raise and support the kids. She worked two or three jobs, and would get assistance from the church and from friends, and now and again, from the state. I had zero earning power back then, but in retrospect, I wouldn’t have minded giving them money. My indigent not-an-aunt Welfare Queen a few posts up? Not so much, even through the state.

For those of you defending that churches and private charities help these moms, and I fully believe they do, have you stopped to think about if government help was truly eliminated? Do you really think the churches and private organizations would step up contributions to cover the loss of food stamps, and other monetary government help being given now? Health care for the mother and baby? I would bet the churches don’t come close currently to “giving” what the federal government does as it is, but take the federal government away, and the number must be overwhelming. I need to try to research that.

@ETpro I agree with most of your post. Where I tend to sway is in the idea that the right wants to get rid of welfare. Some on the right may want that but most want to see a complete overhaul like you mentioned. Most conservatives want to see all those who can do for themselves take responsibility. Those with low IQ’s or handicaps should and always will be taken care of which leads me to @JLeslie‘s point. I and many other conservatives would love the chance to reduce the amount of the welfare system by eliminating fraud and waste. (government expenses) We believe that between the two, Americans could save millions and bring the charity in line with what is needed. We believe in personal responsibility and each individual taking care of themselves then helping others around them.

I know I will get flamed for this but will say it anyway. Here in Louisiana, we saw first hand both side of this with Katrina. There were many people who had no chance but there were also thousands that were able bodied that chose to wait for assistance. Many of you will argue that but it was fact. We saw it. Thousands of people in the N.O. area were so used to the government taking care of them that when the government didn’t, they were lost. Believe it or not it is that simple.

The more we allow our government to “insure” that everything is taken care of, we lose the ability and desire to do for ourselves. I believe that is human nature. We need the government to force all able people to take care of themselves first, when and if they can’t, the government can step in.

One more thing that I see here on fluther a lot is the notion that the government can do this or that which the private person or groups can’t do as @JLeslie mentioned. The Federal Government doesn’t have anything without the people. We are the Federal Government. Their money comes from us. They also tend to spend more than they take in. Have for years, and that needs to stop.

@missingbite I think everyone wants to get rid of fraud and wasteful spending. The last balanced federal budget we had was Clinton, it was one of thie things I really liked about him. He did not only have higher taxes like the right dwells on, but he streamlined government. If you go to the Clinton library and look at the size of the budget, the actual books, while he was in office, you will be shocked how many inches they shrank year after year.

In Memphis they tell me the same thing about NO and the people down there. I would just offer it is not as simple as it seems. Were they being told to wait? That the streets were treacherous? I agree that there are some people who can’t take care of or do for themselves, some of them are drug addicts and mentally I’ll. Poverty is the big enemy.

@JLeslie I also like the fact that Clinton balanced the budget. One of the things he did well. What I feel he lacked on was National Security. During his presidency:

Feb. 26, New York City: bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade Center, killing 6 and injuring at least 1,040 others. In 1995, militant Islamist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 others were convicted of conspiracy charges, and in 1998, Ramzi Yousef, believed to have been the mastermind, was convicted of the bombing. Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected

June 25, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: truck bomb exploded outside Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds of others. 13 Saudis and a Lebanese, all alleged members of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, were indicted on charges relating to the attack in June 2001

Aug. 7, Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously near 2 U.S. embassies, killing 224 (213 in Kenya and 11 in Tanzania) and injuring about 4,500. 4 men connected with al-Qaeda 2 of whom had received training at al-Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan, were convicted of the killings in May 2001 and later sentenced to life in prison. A federal grand jury had indicted 22 men in connection with the attacks, including Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who remained at large.

Oct. 12, Aden, Yemen: U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole heavily damaged when a small boat loaded with explosives blew up alongside it. 17 sailors killed. Linked to Osama bin Laden, or members of al-Qaeda terrorist network.

The problem, or one of the problems, with government run programs is that therw are people who are being marginalized and are slipping through the cracks. People will go on all day about “rights”. It is the right of teenagers and others who are not financially or emotionally equipped to raise a child to go ahead and_have_ a child. It is then their right to have the government take care of that child. Forget about all that for a minute. Forget that there are thousands of parents out there who are alrady “benefiting” from givernment subsidies and not spending the money on the children. They money is still not enough to get OUT of that situation, and there are really no incentives for education and a way out of the cycle of poverty and ignorance.
Let me say that again. It is a cycle of poverty and ignorance.
I am peripherally involved with a group of church people who have taken it upon themselves to feed a bunch of kids whose parents are in the penal system, addicted to oxycontin or otherwise “absentee” parents. These kids are fed twice at school, this group gives them dinner, provides transportation to doctor visits, church and some activities as they are able. I’d like to expand this program because, as Dr. David Lykken said in a very controversial article, “These kids have a right to be rescued.” They’re hungry now. They need help with academics and life choiec making skills now. Their parents actually take their gifts and pawn them for drugs. A lady in the group asked a little girl what she wanted for her birthday. The girl said that she was going to have her play station back that her mom had pawned. She had never gotten to play with it. And the really sad part is that the little girl did not see anything unusual about this. This is how she lives.
Like I said earlier, stopping an abortion is not the end for the expectant mother, but neither is government subsidies. There are issues that people are afraid to discuss because we’re coming close to infringements on people’s rights. But we shy away at the expense of the silent victims, and the kids who we don’t rescue today are the criminals we want to have locked up with harsher sentences tomorrow.
If the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results, why don’t we just admit that what we’re doing isn’t working, throw away the rule book and try something that makes sense?

@trillian I am all for trying something else. What I have observed is that as people gain wealth they have fewer children. So then I am back to poverty. Now I will concede that I think people higher in the social strata are also probably more likely to have abortions, although I have no statistics to back that up. Also, families with money can financially take care of a baby, even if they were not planned so they would fall outside of this question. I only mention it to acknowledge that any girl can make a mistake or have an unplanned pregnancy, although some are obviously less responsible with their fertility than others. Back to your point. You mat have seen me write before about the SEED program, public boarding schools. I am. All for removing the child from the bad environment for most of the week. When I say bad environment I am primarily talking about the neighborhood, not the parent, but it could be the parent. The tricky part is these students become different. Different than their families, different than their friends at home. The family has to embrace this or I think it is a very tough road psychologically for the child.

I also agree that there seems to be a disconnect, many seem to not realize that the child in the ghetto screwing up his life is going to cost us more in the long run than paying for his education and providing a safe environment. I do understand that people also learn to be dependent, I understand that point, but I think most important is to teach children they will need to be responsible for themselves, and walk them through the options available, vocational, college, etc. If their parents aren’t doing it, some simply because they don’t know what is out there, they are poor, maybe limited, then we as a society should do it.

@missingbite I love that you mention those other attacks. I get very upset they are ignored. In fact during the Bush’s presidency there was a bomb right in front of our embassy in Yemen and during the last presidential election republicans kept saying Bush kept us safe the entire time, and the democrats said nothing! Pisses me off. It all counts. Clinton, from what I understand did try to get more congressional support to spend more and focus more on getting Bin Laden. Were aware of him, and he was on the FBI 10 most wanted list back then. We could argue Clinton could have done a better job at convincing congress, and we can argue the republican congress should have taken these incidents more seriously also, and we can definitely argue that Bush should have been more on his toes also, all intelligence was given to him. Supposedly warnings were not coordinated before the attacks, warnings within our government, like the terrorists taking flight lessons, and we screwed up foiling the attacks.

It burns me to no end when people say they never would have thought an attack like 911 could happen to the US. Naive, and ignores history. Kamakazi jets flew into buildings. Terrorism takes place around the world; in the last 20 years we have seen extreme Muslim groups blowing up things and people in other western countries and our own.

@missingbite Actually, Clinton did sign into law Workfare replacing Welfare. Due to that change in most US states you can only collect welfare for 5 years now. Some provide even less. I agree more improvements are required. I particularly like @Trillian‘s idea of finding ways to use education to break the cycle of poverty. Perhaps schools should include classes on personal responsibility. Somebody’s got to teach it.

But do not believe that is we scrapped the system churches would suddenly abandon their building programs and their push to win new members, and divert those funds into helping all the people that would be left with nothing. I would also point out that Workfare can’t work when there are no jobs. In the Clinton years, we created 25 million new jobs and paid down the National Debt to boot. In the Bush years, the ones where tax cuts for the rich would pay for themselves and create tons of jobs, we added 3 million new jobs. And the policies enacted produced the worst crash since the great depression, taking those 3 million away and 7 million more. Meanwhile, instead of paying down the debt, Bush doubled it to $11 trillion.

As to being tough on terror, we were slowly waking up in the 1990s to the new world we faced and the nature of the enemy in it. Perhaps it would have helped if Clinton had fired more cruise missles at training camps. He did try in Afghanistan and narrowly missed getting bin Laden. But for Republicans to claim the high ground when Clinton left Bush a security briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the USA” and in it warning that they might hijack planes and use them as missiles is the height of partisan blindness. The Bush administration had that National Security Briefing for over 8 months and did nothing to strengthen airport security. Because of that inaction, nearly 3000 Americans died on September 11th. The “He kept us safe.” lie is preposterous. He lost more American lives to terrorism than all the other presidents in US history combined.

So I agree with the goals of improving welfare, boosting personal responsibility and ensuring against terrorist attacks to the degree that we can. I just don’t see the policies being proposed by Republicans as taking us there. I judge things not by ideology but by results. Do what has proven to work.

@JLeslie It might take a wake-up call, but they’d do it.

I think it’s because women who choose to abort their unborn children are perceived as selfish and cruel. And once the kid is born, people don’t want to support a child that a woman doesn’t want. It’s like “Why do I have to support your unwanted kid?” It all boils down to selfish women who chose to get pregnant, or didn’t take the necessary precautions to avoid pregnancy. Either way, if the woman doesn’t want the kid, she is perceived as bad.

@MRSHINYSHOES Does that irresponsibility extend to remembering not to get raped?

@MRSHINYSHOES So it’s NOT about the life of the child—it’s about punishing a wicked woman. The kid’s welfare really isn’t much of a concern.

@ETpro and @keobooks Ummmm. I think you’re misunderstanding @MRSHINYSHOES. I don’t think he’s saying the women are wicked. I think he’s saying that this is what the perception of the general public is. He’s just stating what the public thinks in an answer to the question.

@Trillian You may be right. I hope he weighs in and clears that up.

@ETpro If you read @MRSHINYSHOES post it clearly states twice that it is a perception.

I thought the same thing, that @MRSHINYSHOES was guessing how people perceive the women. I did not get the impression he thought this way, or that at minimum that he felt it was reasonable to punish the children under this thought process, I think he was attempting to answer the question based on how some other people might think. hopefully he will clarify.

@JLeslie I re-read the main question, and I feel that it’s important here to clarify: the mother isn’t “ceasing to support the life of her baby;” that’s misleading language. Abortion is the deliberate termination of an unborn life.

But even if we go with the language in your post, you kinda have to wonder how it’s better to abandon a pre-natal child than it is to abandon one that’s at least self-contained.

@Nullo It is tricky, the wording, how different people look at pregnancy, the fetus, etc. If you were hooked up to a friend, giving him blood to keep him alive, and then decided to change your mind, you would have the legal right to. It really is about the legality in the end. A person who believes the soul enters at conception, does not care about the development of the fetus, or the science really. I can’t really argue with that person, it is their religious belief. The thing is some people don’t have that belief.

What I would say is if people are arguing the fetus must be allowed to develop and live, then as a society if we require it, we as a society have to feel responsible for the child. Now, there are people who don’t want abortions who can’t take care of their children well, and that is a whole other thing. In the end we wind up paying for both really.

I would ask you to take a moment to imagine having a baby growing inside of you. One you don’t want. You are getting fatter, you have to pee all of the time, maybe you develop gestational diabetes, or your blood pressure is a little elevated. Getting some stretch marks on your body. Your back hurts, its harder to do your job. Your iron is getting very low. I need to look how many pregnancies have some sort of complication. It is higher than you think I bet. Oh, and at the end, you will endure a very painful labor and deliver, maybe need to get stiched up from tearing in one of the more delicate parts of your body, or have to go through surgery to get the baby out. You get no say in whether you have to go through it or not.

@MRSHINYSHOES You are leaving me twisting in the wind here.

I’ve heard all of the arguments, @JLeslie, fear not.
I know that the law presents opportunities that principle does not permit: I technically have the legal right, per wacky old Missouri law, to gun down Mormons when they come to the door. But not JWs. Principle and inclination would not permit me to do so.

It is unlikely that I will ever be pregnant, making the thought experiment difficult to really connect with. A life-long love of pizza (now countered with a physical job, thankfully) has, however, left similar tracks. But I suspect that principle would deny me an abortion in any case. After all, it’s not the kid’s fault, but mine (for being stupid) or somebody else’s (for being stupid/criminal/etc.), and principle has been known to sustain a person quite well.

@Nullo so then I guess you are back to personal responsibility and it is not societies responsibility in the end for the mistakes the young girl made?

@JLeslie I don’t think that I’ve ever really moved away from personal responsibility. It is your responsibility to stay out of trouble, and it’s sorta your support network’s responsibility to support you when stuff happens.

I shall employ an example. Years ago, my mom had occasion to need surgery. There were complications, and the attending physician nearly killed her. I was about 9 or 10 at the time, so I missed a lot of details, but it makes for a pretty good story overall, and involves the near-strangulation of an obstructive bureaucrat.
Complicated medical procedures, of course, have their toll on the household. Ordinarily, my dad would work all day and Mom would take care of the house and supervise homeschooling activities. With Mom in the hospital for a month (?) there was, of course, a huge gap. That’s where our church – acting in the role of a support network – stepped in, bringing meals, providing babysitters, cleaning the house, etc.

@Nullo sorry to hear about such an awful circumstance regarding your mom. I too feel strongly about family, community, and friends pulling together in times of need for one of it’s members. Some people are not as connected as your family obviously is. Some people are dysfunctional themselves, and have quite a bit of dysfunction around them, and if there is a possibility of giving a young child a chance I lean that way, even if it is a little bit of a financial burden on society. Money spent on young people if they become successful in life costs taxpayers much less in the long run. It is not just out of altruism on my part that I want to help those children, it is out of selfishness also. Along with the selfish theme, and following the thought of not wanting to pay my money, because people are irresponsible with their fertility all to often, I want the woman who should not have become pregnant in the first place to abort, but I don’t have a problem with abortion. I much prefer they don’t get pregnant in the first place, I rather pay for them to have their tubes blocked or some other birth control.

In short, and in my personal opinion, for entirely too long, society in general has been losing sight of the inherent balance between privilege/authority/rights and responsibility (to ones’ self and to others.) It is this unhealthy disparity that first causes and then exacerbates the social ills of today. This includes the problems with groups that insist that women have little or no rights to say what shall or should happen to their bodies, while these same groups tend to also be the ones to dictate the allocation of tax dollars, likely insuring first, and perhaps only their own best interests. I truly feel that if individuals were to learn personal responsibility as was available still somewhat in the last decade, and stopped blaming everything and every one for their own actions, it would all start to work a whole lot better.

If people actually had to own up to their agreements in life, had to take punishment for their indiscretions, instead of being able to pawn the blame off on another, or buy their way out with money or favours, this whole world would be a nicer place for all of us. Of course, this transition from “party til’ you puke” daily greed and attitude to something more humanitarian in nature would take time to show its benefits, which leads me to the other problem plaguing the world, people’s lack of patience and attention span. If people would slow down and try to enjoy life, instead of simply wishing the day (the work day for most,) was already over so they could all go home to all those possessions that serve to remind them just what they’re working so hard for, life would be nicer, I think. Traffic would be nicer, even in rush hour. People would communicate, instead of being so cynical about life.

It may sound Utopian, and I’m actually not a believer in perfect worlds, but I’m adamant about progressive ones. And I think that this sort of recovery of self would benefit everyone, making each person more aware of his or her actions and subsequent affect on the world. How clean then would our human “footprint” be, if we stopped, listened, learned how to make things better for others?

And you might be saying, “Well, that’s all very well and good, but what the heck does that have to do with pregnant women and the people that would force them to have children but not provide those forced lives any support past that original force?” To which I would answer, if you consider the “cause” of any “problem” therein you’ll find the answer. So too, therein, the relevancy of my statement lies. If people treated one another with more respect, understanding such to be part of the maintenance in balance between authority/privilege/right and that of responsibility, it’s possible less rapes would occur, less broken marriages would result, women might even reach past the glass ceiling in wages vs that of men nationwide (don’t think that’s quite equal just yet,) people could have more, per household, and more importantly to this discussion, per FAMILY… and so the common reasons for a woman having an abortion would be minimised to her choice to carry the child to term, knowing her body will change, essentially forever, her world will change, essentially forever, and… she will be part of the progress of the world, one in which she has a hand in making it better, by being a good and loving parent, raising her child to understand his/her privileges/authority/responsibility in this life as well as his/her rights as a human being on this planet.

And before anyone manages to jump to conclusions, based on my language here. No… I’m not a “pro lifer,” or “pro deather” or any of the other euphemistic calling cards associated with groups to which I have a hard time identifying totally. I’m simply a human, and I’m not even “pro human.” We humans have screwed up so many cool things on this world of ours, so no, I’m not that, but I’m not saying that humans are all bad either. I guess you could say if I’m pro anything, I’m pro gressive ;)

Good points, @FR07en. But you didn’t address the issue of the medical burdens of pregnancy. There are plenty of women for whom pregnancy is risky (those with a history of pre-eclampsia or pulmonary hypertension) or who physically or psychologically can’t tolerate the stresses on the body (e.g. hyperemesis gravidarum). Increasing personal responsibility unfortunately would not help these women.

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Which is not to say that I don’t agree with your basic premise…