It seems that income is a factor in abortion rates. Women tend to be poor at the time of their abortions. Note, however, that women tend to be young at the time of their abortions, which is tied to both the likelihood of abortion and income. This will skew the results. A more telling stat would be abortion rates by education level obtained. From the link above I found abortions by education level:

EDUCATION LEVEL

No Answer……………….5%
Under 12 yrs…………….6%
High School (12 yrs)……..39%
Associate or Trade (13-14)..26%
Bachelors (15-16)………..19%
Masters (17-18)………….4%
Ph.D. (>18)……………..1%

I decided to add a little more value to these results by weighting each category by the percentage of women who obtained each of these education levels. I found the stats on the website for the National Center for Education Statistics and pulled them from one of their annual report from 2005. The actual table is linked here. After the weighting I get the following results (rounded to the nearest whole percent):

No Answer……………….5%
Under 12 yrs…………….3%
High School (12 yrs)……..73%
Associate or Trade (13-14)..8%
Bachelors (15-16)………..11%
Masters (17-18)………….0%
Ph.D. (>18)……………..0%

Note that this analysis is in no way scientific (I had to make a lot of assumptions about each survey), it just serves to demonstrate that education level seems to be an important factor.

Another thing to think about is the unwanted pregnancy rates by each income group. Sure, a smaller percentage of poor women may not have the means to get an abortion, but they probably have a very high rate of unwanted pregnancies. The product of the two rates would combine to determine the actual abortion rate. So don’t rule out poverty as a contributing factor.

Abstinence worked before safe sex practices were around, and now it’s outdated, but because it is tied in with christian values, it won’t go away.

Sorry, I should have read your entire post before replying. It sounds like you don’t want to legislate abortion. That is good to hear. It is certainly a good common ground on which to talk about the moral issues.

By the way, I should let everyone know that I was party to an abortion 10 or so years ago. I got my girlfriend of 2 years pregnant and we both decided that the best thing to do would be to terminate it because she said she would not be able to give it up for adoption if she carried it to term. Also, she didn’t want to have to tell her family that she was pregnant. It really didn’t have to do with poverty or anything like that. It was just a matter of bad timing and family shame.

I think family/social shame is probably one of the biggest reasons for abortion. And ironically enough, I think it is because of religion. A girl from a highly religious family with strict rules about premarital sex and all that is very likely to use abortion as a way out.

I’m not really sure what poverty has to do with it at all. I can’t see why a poor woman would be more likely to have an abortion than an affluent woman. Come to think of it, I would imagine that women with more resources and education would be MORE likely to have an abortion. Think about it. Lets say a college bound senior in high school who gets pregnant. She’s got college to think about. A child at this point would make college very difficult and giving up a baby for adoption is not an easy thing to do. Abortion is the “logical” option. Where someone who doesn’t have college or a career ahead of her might just go through with having the baby. And the way welfare works, she’ll just get more money… so what the heck?

I wasn’t conflating abortion and miscarriage.I was merely pointing out that no matter how sad it may be for a mother and family, miscarriage is not considered a death of a member of society. It is a very private matter. Beyond the possible public health rammifications (was the the miscarriage cause by bad water or soemthing?), the government is not involved. Similarly, if a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy, the government need not be involved. As with a miscarriage, it is a very private matter.

Government involvement is essentially what we are talking about here. That is, if you want to actually enforce your idea that abortion is wrong. Think about what it means to give government the power to force a woman to give birth. You’d have to investigate every miscarriage to make sure the mother didn’t intentionally induce it. And youd have to require women to report pregancies. Do you charge a woman who has an abortion with murder? This is a very sticky legal issue. Do you really want to go there? Or are you content with simply making it known that you abhor abortion?

Your post was well worth the wait. I’m glad that you’ve abandoned the ‘argument from potential’ and stuck to your religious reasons. There may be non-religious defenses of the right-to-life side of the argument, but that certainly isn’t one of them.

I’m also thrilled that you accept that the golden rule can be a non-religious basis for ethical behavior. I know the rule is widely considered to have Christian origin and I did not know it was from the Sermon on the Mount. Thanks for pinning that down for me. This rule, however, has roots in just about every major world culture, not just the western, Judea-Christian one. For instance, this rule can be found in the teachings of Confucius, whose life pre-dates Jesus’ by about 500 years.

Finally, your last paragraph is dead-on. It sounds like Jim Wallis’ book encourages Christians to seek out and fix the root causes of behaviors that they find objectionable as opposed to banning the final outcomes. I bet you’d find that such an approach would have broad support from the pro-choice community and other liberals. Such an approach certainly has my support.

PS “Sid Faiwu” is a name that came from my imagination when I was about twelve. Later in life, I adopted it as my online pseudonym.

Hi all,

Sorry for taking so long to respond (again) … I had written a long reply at work the other day, and then I thought “hmmm… maybe I shouldn’t be posting this from here”. I’m still happy to continue the discussion when I have time… perhaps gasmonso will post an abortion-related topic soon and we can shift it to there!

@YF:

“Straw man… No one is saying that a fetus isnt *potentially* an unborn human, mearly that an unborn fetus isn’t a human.”

I was responding to Matthew, who said “The issue of whether or not a fetus is human is a red herring. It *is* an unborn human, by definition.” Perhaps you both hold different view on the matter, or maybe you’re both saying the same thing in different ways. I’m just going on what you’ve both been saying - I don’t want to put words in either of your mouths! Currently, my understanding is that you believe that a fetus != human, whereas Matthew has said that fetus == human, but that it does not deserve the same protection that is commonly afforded to post-birth (!) humans.

I still disagree with your summing up - why is a non-theistic view the only “logical” one? While you may disagree with the basic premises of what I’m saying, our differences are more to do with epistemology and philosophy than anything else. “Religious vs. non-religious/non-theistic” would be a fairer conclusion, I think.

@Matthew:

I don’t really see how conflating abortion and miscarriage gets us anywhere. Obviously, there’s a fundamental difference between the deliberate act of terminating a pregnancy and losing a pregnancy through an unfortunate miscarriage. re: the article you linked, I agree that it is a completely ridiculous law, borne out of “pro-life” idealism/fundamentalism gone mad.

Why do you feel the need to say that I’d be surprised how many miscarriages there are? I am aware that a miscarriage is a relatively common and very sad event - even in my own circle of friends I can think of three or four families who have experienced a miscarriage at some stage in their lives. While Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their cohorts of rabid, cynical Pharisees may give you the idea that all Christians are a bunch of unfeeling whack-jobs, it simply isn’t the case. ;)

@sidfaiwu: (where does that name come from??)

I have been thinking about the whole “argument from potential” thing. I really just made it up off the top of my head back in post #38, as an example of a possible non-overtly-religious argument against abortion. On further reflection, it’s not really something that I’m interested in defending. I’m not even sure that it’s really something that I believe in (ie. that a fetus is a “potential” human) … I think I might be more honest if I just said that I believed a fetus to be a human, period. I believe that a case for affording the same rights as a human to a fetus is fairly easy to derive from my theology… which, of course, is our irreconcilable difference that I was speaking of earlier: you would discount scriptural theology as a basis for determining values (right?)

I’m glad that you at least have an answer for the basis of non-theistic ethics! Many non-theists that you raise the issue with simply get angry and rant about “how dare you imply that I have no morals, etc. etc.” without really saying anything of substance. In a way I agree with you - the golden rule still holds as a universal truth whether or not you believe in a deity! However, from a Christian perspective (without wanting to pen a sermon), it is sufficient to note that those famous words of Jesus were only a small part of a larger body of teaching (the “sermon on the mount”), in which he was basically describing how people notice a distinction between the behaviour of Christians and others, and how that may in turn lead them to the true source of the benevolence - God himself. I guess I’m just trying to point out that while it is certainly a wonderful rule of thumb by which to live (for Christians and atheists alike), it is by no means a complete summation of the basis of Christian ethics.

I have been reading Jim Wallis’ book “God’s Politics” recently - really identifying with its message! (I’d highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of your religious beliefs (or lack of)). On this issue, and others, I guess my desire is to be what he calls a “wind-changer”. I’m not primarily concerned about the legal status of abortion - I’m much more interested in simply speaking my values in a compassionate way into the public debate, and working on the myriad of other factors which contribute to abortion rates, such as the welfare of poor single-mothers, poverty, etc. It is so vital for people of faith to realise that combatting things such as these has as much to do with their religion and moral constitution as a single issue like abortion. After all, Jesus explicitly told us that the way we treat the poor, needy people will ultimately indicate whether or not we know him at all! It is both stunning and terribly sad that the Religious Right claim to have the monopoly on issues of faith, and yet they are defined as much by warmongering and a disregard for the poor/regard for the rich as much as they are by speaking on personal morality.

Now it’s my turn to take too long to respond :). First let me start by saying that I didn’t mean to imply that all Christians lack intellectual integrity. This is something I do not believe. You are a clear example of a Christian with such integrity. I’ll pick up the discussion based mostly on your post @55.

There is such thing as reasonable faith. Those that practice reasonable faith do a number of things. The important ones I’d list as follows:

a) They recognize which assumptions of theirs rest entirely on faith.
b) They don’t expect everyone to have faith in all the same assumptions.
c) When pieces of their faith contradict one another, they reject one of the pieces (no double-think, for 1984 fans).

When you wrote, “we should protect humanity on the basis that they are uniquely created in the image of God is certainly based on the scriptures, it is at least a reasonable and logical conclusion” you are relaying of the assumption that the Bible is the word of God. While the conclusion is logical, the underlying assumption is not. The assumption is based on faith. Again, it is dangerous to legislate based on faith because it could unnecessarily restrict freedom.

Also in post #55, you asked if we don’t rely on some assumption taken on faith then “on what non-arbitrary basis do we protect human rights at all?” This is an interesting question often brought up by the religious. It basically asks “Without God’s law, how can we know what is moral and what is immoral?” The answer is so fundamental to secularists that they seldom stop to think about it. As a mater of fact, the religious believe the answer as well, they just believe that it is one of God’s laws. It is the golden rule: do onto others as you would have them do onto you. The source of the tenant need not be divine. It is the logical conclusion one reaches once we realize that people are fundamentally the same. We see evidence for this similarity constantly. When I see someone get stung, they react just as I do. When I see others loose a loved one, they grieve in much the same way I do. They demonstrate similar desires for food, water, shelter, etc. Thus other people are like me and deserve the same ethical treatment that I expect.

Notice that a fetus does not behave like other people. It does not express pain, grief, or similar desires. Therefore, it does not deserve the same ethical treatment as people do. It may deserve some lesser ethical treatment, but such would have to be reasonable demonstrated.

I’m really enjoying the discussion as I hope you are. I hope that we can continue.

Here is an example of the kind of ridiculous laws (only a bill so far, thankfully) that come when you start treating an unborn fetus as a member of society:

http://democracyforvirginia.typepad.com/democracy_for_virginia/2005/01/legislative_sen.html