Arguing abortion, contraception as money-savers a “smokescreen”
So a brief blog post today on one of the more utilitarian reasons that I have heard for abortion/contraception – it saves money….
This sounds to me like something I heard from a colleague last year that the reason that New York’s prison population was down… because of Roe v Wade – since then, thousands of poor people have had abortions and a large number of those aborted babies would’ve committed crime and ended up in jail.
I should have suggested to him that an even better way of reducing prison population would be to kill everyone inside, but that would’ve made things awkward and I had only half-finished my drink at the time (and so no quick escape from the awkwardness).
Surely these sorts of arguments are completely beside the point when it comes to abortion. Either abortion is killing of the most innocent, in which case utilitarian arguments like this are sickening and deeply perverse, or abortion is nothing more than a medical procedure, in which case how much money it may save the state is neither here nor there… unless the state is thinking of using it as an argument for compulsory abortion as a cost saving device, a la China?
So, as with most abortion arguments, they are a smokescreen which obscure the real argument: are we killing a human being or not?
~ Marcus Roberts, Mercator Net, March 28
[Graphic via chillertv.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
^ This. And also, taken right from the horse’s mouth:
– Steven Levitt, co-author of “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime” (and one of its most stalwart defenders).
The last line sums it up. I wrote about this recently as well: http://voxlogicae.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/the-abortion-debate-from-a-logical-lens/
If it’s NOT a human being, then it is the only organism with its own blood type, beating heart, DNA and brain functions to have all of those human things and yet NOT be human.
And if it’s not human, then what is it?
And NOBODY better say “products of conception.” I’m warning you.
The answer to the question is found by examining a 6-week along human embryo. It has a heartbeat, a torso, a head, limbs, and simple brain function.
Beautifully simple and truthful.
My father argues this til this day, not very passionately just to sound knowledgeable in certain circles.
The next family get together is going to be a little “awkward” for us I think.
“are we killing a human being or not?”
You’re too late. As we’ve discussed here before, that question is no longer relevant, because the pro-choicers have long since decided that sometimes it’s OK to kill other humans.
The whole thing is kind of eerie: the crime rate decreased because those who would have become criminals were never born.
The colleague made a classic cause and effect error. Just because crime rates were down after Roe v Wade does not mean the two had anything to do with each other.