How “Poor” Are the Poor?
FrontPageMagazine.com | Robert Rector | August 28, 2007
Poverty is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring that there were 37 million poor persons living in this country in 2005, roughly the same number as in the preceding years.[4] According to the Census report, 12.6 percent of Americans were poor in 2005; this number has varied from 11.3 percent to 15.1 percent of the population over the past 20 years.[5]
To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers—to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor. For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 37 million persons classified as “poor” by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity. Most of America’s “poor” live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.[6]
The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
- Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
- Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
- The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
- Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
- Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
- Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
- Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.
As a group, America’s poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.
. . . more
105 comments Tuesday 28 Aug 2007 | Jacobse | Health |
When will the church wake up to the needs of the poor? I don’t mean the poor on the other side of the world or the poor in their church–the poor in their city and in their neighborhoods. Our obligation is to serve, feed and clothe the poor. The modern American church does not do a good job at this.
Norman Geisler’s new book ‘Love Your Neighbor: Thinking Wisely About Right and Wrong’ on ethics has a great chapter on economic injustice. It should be a must read for all pastors–when was the last time you heard a sermon on ministering to the poor?
Here’s the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Neighbor-Thinking-Wisely/dp/1581349459/ref=sr_1_1/102-2085712-9684969?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188422381&sr=8-1
I think that’s harsh and unfair. First,there are many social services agencies that could not operate without the assistance of local churches. I volunteered at two homeless shelters in Chicago during the nineties and both used the basements of various church parishes as their primary emergency shelters. My current Priest, a die-hard Republican, serves on the board of the local Habitat for Humanity chapter and has stood on a street corner in an area where homeless people congregate, passing out food, clothing and other supplies.
In his book “Bowling Alone”, sociologist Robert Putnam provides statistics indicating that rates of community service and volunteerism are much higher among those who attend church regularly compared to non-church-goers. Obviously, that’s not just a coincidence.
There is a a vigorous debate among Christians about the role of government in alleviating poverty, however that is different issue than “caring about the poor”. There are some Christians who argue that helping the poor is primarily an individual responsibility and that the government’s role in fighting poverty should be reduced. While I partially disagree with that, (it is both an individual and collective responsibility) such views are the product of political philosophy and not a reflection of personal compassion or theology.
Superficial observations like, “a lot of poor people are fat and watch TV, so they must be doing okay” really don’t do much to advance our understanding of poverty in America but only promote false sterotypes.
A full and complete consideration of poverty in America should also examine trends in the distribution of wealth among the population, the potential for upward mobility available to poor and middle-class Americans, and income gains or losses over time for each of the economic statums of the population as measured by wealth and income.
If we examine these trends a different picture emerges. The percentage of national wealth owned by the richest one percent of the population is now greater than at any time since the early nineteen-twenties. Even among the richest one percent there has been an increase in the percentage of wealth owned by the richest tenth of that percentile. Thisnhas occurred while income for middle- and lower-class Americans has stagnated or fallen.
Reviewing the latest Census Bureau figures, the Economic Pollicy Institute notes:
Poverty, Income, and Health Insurance trends in 2006, http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_income20070828
A truly strong economy is one where a rising tide lifts all boats. Many mainstream economists have noted that the growing concentration of wealth held by a mall number of very rich, in conjunction with income stagnation and growing economic risk for the middle-class poses a threat to the long-term economic well-being of our nation. For this reason, a reversal of the economic policies of the last 7 years is in order, requiring that we make our tax system more progressive and direct fiscal spending towards people in those economic strata who have realized the least economic gain.
Note 3, Dean, giving money to people without considering “culture” is recipe for failure
Your note remains one dimensional, it refers only to money. Your solution is to give people who have less money more money, through force of government, of course. To Dean all solutions are effected by government.
Have you asked yourself whether giving people who have less money more money actually improves the status of the recipients?
The American government has transferred a great deal of wealth to the poor through many, many programs since the 1960’s. How has that worked out?
Unless you study those programs and objectively assess whether they succeeded in any measure, you cannot responsibly advocate the same old thing. The “same old thing” is use the power of coercion possessed by government to transfer wealth from those who have earned it in an honest manner to those who have not earned it.
Thought experiment. We have just given a poor family a stipend of $500/month. Does this improve their well-being? It depends on how the money is spent. If you speak to social workers who work directly with the poor, they will tell you that there exists a culture of poverty. This is what Bill Cosby has been talking about with reference to Black family, it applies in only slightly different form to all families.
Here are some of the features of the culture of poverty.
A) poor health habits, which lead to poor health, which drains what small resources the family has and which interfere with steady employment.
Are the poor health habits the result of ignorance? Perhaps, but, why, in this day of universal public education should anyone be ignorant of the basic facts needed to establish and maintain good health habits? Why don’t the Democrat controlled major cities like Detroit, Washington, D.C, and Philadelphia produce effective schols for their own constituents?
Are there middle class people with poor health habits? Sure, but due to other decisions that they have made, it does not have the catastrophic effect
on the family.
casual atitude about family unity Studies show that the incidence of illegitimacy decreases as family income rises; so does longevity of marriage.
You can argue that poverty puts strains on poor families, fine I accept that, however, FAMILY HAS ALWAYS BEEN USED BY AMERICANS AS A SOCIAL SAFETY NETWORK. How did previous immigrant groups rise from abject poverty? Waves of Poles, Italians, Greeks and others have come to America owning literally nothing, yet, through the strength of family cohesiveness they overcome and prospered. In addition to family cohesiveness, a strong attachment to a church/synagogue community also supported success. Minimal resources were shared and used wisely. Every family member helped every other family member in productive activities such as the persuit of education and steady employment.
Some Black leaders have begun to speak out about the cultural effect of rap music which denigrates women and holds life-long marriage in contempt. IN the world of rap, life-long marriages and steady work are for chumps. Money won’t solve this problem.
Would giving money to a young man who aspires to live the life of a rapper really improve anything?
C)poor schools See the work of Marva Collins who started a private school for low-income black children. Here students were studying Shakespeare at as 13 and 14. She employed all of the old-fashioned teaching techniques that had proven effective pre WWII. These techniques have been abandoned by the current educational establishment. The result is abject failure for black and other low income children.
d)live for today approach to finances I read an article by a social worker who stated that the poor see money as entertainment, the middle class see money as security and the rich see money as a route to family power. It is a matter of looking at the bigger picture, the long-term picture.
e)drug and alcohol addiction Remember it was the cultural Left that worked hard to normalize recreational drug usage.
Add up these factors and it is clear that a transfer of money won’t help very much but it will cost a great deal
I once explained to a casual friend of mine that my accounant father saved up money and purchased a car for cash in order to avoid interest payments on loans. By the way, we had nice, new cars, not junk. My friend was amazed as she had never heard of anything like that.
Money transfers are no answer and they have the unintended effect of penalizing the productive through the coercive power of government.
$127 billion and counting, or $500,000 per person who lived in New Orleans
To date, the people of the United States have given $127 billion to New Orleans. To put this in perspective, the entire “GNP” of the State of Louisiana is $141 billion. The money given is enough to provide each person living inside the city limits of New Orleans with $500,000.
This week every leader in New Orleans has made a public plea for more money
Many engineers hold the position that parts of old New Orleans can never be adequately protected from storm related floods and that they should be closed off from human habitation. However, NO leaders want the rest of America to rebuild neighborhoods located many, many feet below sea level. Neighborhoods which are nearly impossible to protect from major storm surges.
It is one huge gravy train for corruption and graft, brought to you by the Democrat party.
Missourian: Fiscal stimulus is not “giving people money”. It is investment in our nation’s physical infrastructure, techincal capabilities and human resources with the goal of facilitating and expanding economic activity.
How many bridges need to collapse into the Mississippi river before people like you wake up? Tax cuts given to the very rich end up in sheltered accounts in the Cayman Islands. Tax revenue spent repairing roads and bridges in America create jobs for middle-class workers and spending by middle-class consumers. Money invested in research and development help create the industries and jobs of the future. Money spent of improvement of education and college tuition grants helps create workers who can be more productive.
As result of the narrow, selfish, myopic ideology you espouse, America is falling behind in alomst every category. We no longer have the tallest buildings, the fastests trains, the most educated work force or the healthiest population. Every day our nation sinks more perilously into debt while the infrastructure crumbles under our feet. Other nation’s have proud and dedicated civil services whose chief objective is the well being of their nation. America has a government run by “Brownies”, politically appointed, unqualified hacks and cronies who despise the idea of government and are only marking time and making connections until they can get back into the private sector. It can’t even accurately be called a free market economy, but it is rather a system of socialism for the rich, where every law is written with the objective of funnelling subsidies and tax breaks into the pockets of some favored industry.
20% of Washington D.C. public school students didn’t make it to first days of class
Source:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070830/METRO/108300079/1001
Somehow the poverty-stricken inhabitants of the New York immigrant tennement slums managed to get their kids to a New York Public School.
Those kids, in turn, managed to learn in an English only environment. The second generation went on to nearly unlimited success in America.
It isn’t just a matter of throwing money at people.
The Black community in particular needs to disown the rap parasites indoctrinating their kids and others’ kids in the culture of depravity.
Note #3:
Superficial observations like, “a lot of poor people are fat and watch TV, so they must be doing okay” really don’t do much to advance our understanding of poverty in America but only promote false sterotypes.
Nope. Fat people are not poor – at least any Christian definition of the term “poor”.
A full and complete consideration of poverty in America should also examine trends in the distribution of wealth among the population, the potential for upward mobility available to poor and middle-class Americans, and income gains or losses over time for each of the economic statums of the population as measured by wealth and income.
Actually, this is a materialist view, informed by your now conscious marxism, since we have told you about it numerous times
Besides, this is EXACTLY (upward mobility, etc.) what our economy provides better than any other – your just upset you can’t implement your marxist goals, so you co-opt the language (e.g. “upward mobility”).
For this reason, a reversal of the economic policies of the last 7 years is in order,
You Troll, you Democratic party hack, why don’t you go post this stuff on the Democratic party hack websites instead of here?? We have not bought it for the last 2 or 3 years, what do we have to do to get it through your hard heart and head that we will never buy this base propaganda????
Note 6, DeanS, where do you live?
No, Dean, America isn’t “falling behind” in almost every department. Our economy is outpeforming every other economy in the world. We have created more jobs in the last decade then then entire EU.
The Economist just ran a feature on the “America is doomed” theme. It recounted author after author predicting the “end of American economic dominance.”
We certainly have problems to solve, but, in the mean time, we are more prosperous than anyone has ever been. We have jobs for more people and have fewer genuinely poor people than any other country.
Everybody in the world wants to live here, Dean, right here in terrible, old, crumbling, stumbilng America. God Bless Her.
Note 6, Dean S, You have made Eisenhower roll in his grave, shame on you.
For ten points who was the “Father of the U.S. Interstate System” A great Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dean, trying to place the blame for bridge collapses on free-marketeers is a stretch even for you.
Open any Economics 101 textbook and you will see that classical, free-market economics calls for the government to invest in infrastructure.
Infrastructure, as I refer to it here, is defined as roads, waterways, airports and such. There is no debate there. It is simply ludicrous and ignorant to claim that free-marketeers don’t support good infrastructure.
.
As to the specific issue of New Orleans “infrastructure” there exists plenty of evidence of gross negligence and corruption in New Orleans and there is reason to question whether some parts of the city should be rebuilt in the same place. Even at that, $500,000 per person is a ridiculous amount of money by anyone’s standard.
As to the idea of “throwing money at people” I was referring to primarily to income transfer programs which you promote at every possible opportunity.
I have never run into anyone more obsessed with the idea of income redistrubtion and wealth redistribution more than you are.
There is an old saying in most business schools that if every dollar of wealth were evenly redistributed across every household in America in Year One, by Year Five the income distribution would show some people many more times wealthy than others. Some people handle their affairs well, some people work hard, some people save, some people don’t Dean. Redistribute all you want and you will never fail to have some people with bad judgment.
An old probate lawyer once told that that after 25 years of probate practice, he observed the 90% of all inheritances are spent within one year of receipt.
Most people don’t have the discipline to save and work with the future in mind
it is just human nature. Those that do will do better on average.
The Soviets tried to create a “new man.” It didn’t work but they killed tens of millions in the trying. I would like to avoid a replay of that scenario.
Note 10, Dean, government is the only human creation capable of killing and imprisoning millions, it should be watched like a hawk and starved.
By the way, education in America is one of the most dysfunctional institutions we have. It consumes more and more money and delivers less and less. Please tell me who is in charge of American education? Teacher’s unions, the biggest contributors to the Democrat party.
Modern universities fail to teach Americans their own history and the value of their own culture, while at the same time, actually undoing the traits that bode for success in the world. American employers are noting that many degrees disqualify a person for work. No employer in their right mind would hire a “woman’s studies” major for example.
Assistance can be provided in any area and it becomes utmost important for the organizations to see that the service is done well.
Let me share my views about Personal Assistance services and my experiences with them.
Usually some business concerns outsource assistance services or personal assistance services when they do not locate adequate time to concentrate in their business activities. Assistance services are provided to both top executives and clients. Assistance can be provided in any service as you may necessitate. Assistants/ Personal assistants are employed only after a thorough training to support any sort of work. He does his work autonomously. They also support disabled persons and help them to guide in their day today activities. By engaging them in our work we can meet those specific circumstances accordingly.
A personal assistant uses his own office / equipment to complete the projects or assignments taken. Companies employing them need not pay compensation like monthly salary, sick pay, vacation pay, insurance and other benefits. You only need to pay for the work that is outsourced. There is no need to train them separately as they are already trained and qualified. They are always at your service and fulfill their duty on time.
My experiences with personal assistants were good. We have outsourced some of these services to vServe solution (www.vservesolution.com) and Diksha research from India and found their services to be satisfying and reliable. The prices offered for their services are affordable and hence I gladly recommend these companies for their service.
Once again, Christopher you are making sweeping genalizations without any supporting evidence. Where is the data to subtantiate your assertion that the United States has greater upward economic mobility than any other country? I don’t live in your magical world of myth and dogma, so if you want to convince me of something you have to provide evidence.
One study I found entitled, Understanding Mobility in America, April 26, 2006, Center for American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html concluded:
note 13:
Once again, Christopher you are making sweeping genalizations without any supporting evidence.
Once again Dean, you are applying a marxist/socialist framework to man – making him a “victim” instead of a child of God. What is man???
A man who is fat, has a roof over his head, has more than one tv, a cell phone, etc. is not “poor” by any reasonable defintion. He may be deficient in other areas (the ability to discipline himself, to prioritize, etc being the most likely) but he is not “poor”
The rest of your post is the usual Democratic Hack talking points. Should you not be Trolling somewhere else??
Christopher –
Now here is where I’ll differ with you. I am the unhappy citizen of a formerly publicly traded company. The company went private and is now the vassal of a venture capital company, as are quite a number of tech companies.
The benefits are declining, the work conditions are going South, in fact the whole thing has most of us heading for the exits.
Now is this the government’s fault?
Yes. Sarbanes-Oxley, burdensome regulation that requires on-balance sheet hedges to be marked to market, and other FASB regulations I could name have conspired to make ‘going private’ a really attractive option for management.
For employees, we get the shaft. Add that to increasing concerns over outsourcing and in-sourcing, and the technology sector as a whole is full of a bunch of well-paid but increasingly miserable people.
Is this Bush’s fault? Partially, he certainly hasn’t done anything to buck these trends. Have the Dems done anything meaningful?
Nope, in fact some of their pet policies have contributed to the issue.
The problem is no one is really dealing with the situation as it is. Dems scream ‘poverty’ and Republicans scream back, “Tax cuts have produced the best economy in a generation!”
Bull. For my sector things are lousy, but the Dems don’t offer a solution which will amount to anything other than the opportunity to make it worse.
The Republicans offer a moderated version of the Dems poison pill.
I know you don’t like Dean’s comments, but be real. I’m not nearly as concerned about poor people on welfare as I am about middle class white-collar employees who are getting the shaft.
Glen – Your Naderite claim that there are no differences in the economic policies of Republicans and Democrats really doesn’t stand scrutiny.
I will agree that the Democrats are confused and all-over-the board when it comes to trade policy and the wisdom of outsourcing. However beyond that, it’s clear that Democrats support more domestic spending and fewer and smaller tax cuts and corporate subsidies, while the Republicans champion less domestic spending and more tax cuts and corporate subsidies. That is a huge, major difference in fiscal policy.
Democratic argue that spending on infrastructure projects that create jobs, combined with tax cuts directed towards the middle class would have created a huge boost in spending that would have been highly stimulative for the economy. Republicans countered that tax cuts inevitably, and almost magically, result in greater incentives to work , and even greater incentives to spend, resulting in an economic surge that replaces the revenue lost through the tax cut. However, recent experience doesn’t support this. While tax cuts directed at middle-class workers with unmet material needs do lead to spending, tax cuts directed at the rich, who have all their material needs satisfied, tend to be saved, rather than spent.
Recent studies, and I will refer to two, do not support Republican claims that tax cuts create a surge in economic activitty that replaces revenue.
A Heckuva Claim; Mr. Bush is oblivious to the consequences of his tax cuts.. The Washington Post Saturday, January 6, 2007; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/05/AR2007010501801.html
Tax cuts for the rich, a central feature of Republican economic strategy, have exploded the deficit, and led to widening economic inequality. The Democratic approach certainly would have resulted in different results.
The adoption of supply-side economics fundamentally changed the philosophy of the Republican party, writes Jonathan Chait in The New Republic:
How a cult hijacked American politics. Flight of the Wingnuts
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070910&s=chait091007
Dean did Chait write this article or did he borrow it from his friend Stephen Glass?
Dean by posting Chait’s editiorial all you’ve done is regurgitated leftist opinion, not fact. You need to get over posting editorials by political wonks as though they are self-evident as some kind of “truth”.
JBL – What part specifically do you disagree with, and what is the substantive evidence that demonstrates that it is wrong?
Republicans were not always slavish, cult-like devotees of what George Herbert Walker Bush called “voodoo economics. (Despite the elder Bush’s misgivings the fact remains that more that half the national debt incurred by the people of the United States was accumulated under Presidents named Bush.) There was a time when the Republican party stood for good government and sound economic policies. Chait writes:
I would like my Republican friends to consider that their party’s path back to power lies in putting down the supply-side Kool-Aid and returning to the cautious and fiscally responsible economic policies of their more moderate predecessors
Dean,
You really need to expand your reading list from political tripe and parroting the information as some kind of enlightened truth. It’s not. It’s the opinion of a political activist attempting to sway the weak minded to his viewpoint.
You’ve been posting these anti-Repulican economic claptrap as though this is some kind of “new revelation”. It’s not Chait and his ilk are just repeating the old arguments made during the Reagan years. And their solution is for Republican to just become more like the left economically and everything will be okay and paradise on Earth will be ushered in. Dean don’t drink the Kool-aid you warn so many others about drinking.
You’re so concerned about Republicans following a “horrible economic” path you seem to ignore the political changes of the Democrats. Who for a time where unwilling to sacrifice their unborn children on the altar of abortion politics as they are today. The Democrats have moved away from the party of FDR and JFK to devoting themselves to unrestricted abortion at any cost. Yet I don’t see you posting “solutions” to help the Democrats return to a cautious and more responsible path of their moderate predecessors. Move beyond hyperbole and don’t swallow the hook,line, and sinker of political pandering.
Support for Roe V. Wade by a majority of Democratic politicians is a major failing of the Democratic party and one that puts it in opposition to Christian morality. The core assumption upon which the entire opinion rests is that in the first trimester of life the unborn child is not a “person” deserving of legal protection. A consistent ethic of life demands respect and defense of human life both inside and outside of the womb at all stages of gestation and life. While legal prohibition may not be the best approach to reducing abortion, the government should at the very least stop all public funding for abortions not medically neccesary, provide greater financial incentives for adoption and greatly increase all public health measures aimed at curbing unwanted pregnancies.
The fact that per capita rates of abortion are highest among women in lower income groups suggests a socio-economic link between poverty and abortion. Women without husbands or economic support are less likely to carry to term. Men without jobs are less likely to marry. It’s not the entire explanation for why abortions occur, but a part of it.
So while the Democrats are undeniably morally deficient in their support for Roe V. Wade, their economic policies at least ameliorate some of the conditions that cause abortions to occur. Republican policies which funnel revenue away from programs to help the poor and into the pockets of the rich, on the other hand, exacerbate those conditions.
So what are you arguing Dean, that Democratic policies to reduce the population through abortion to lower the welfare state is morally superior?
No, I never said that at all. That you could even draw such a wild and unsupported conclusion demonstrates a willfully malicious intent.
My point was that government efforts to fight poverty have an indirect effect of lowering the abortion rate because giving young men and women more hope about their own economic prospects makes them more willing to marry and be parents.
And your proof that government economic policies reduce abortion is where Dean?
note 23:
My point was that government efforts to fight poverty have an indirect effect of lowering the abortion rate because giving young men and women more hope about their own economic prospects makes them more willing to marry and be parents.
In your Marxist dreams. Abortion is not “caused” by economic conditions. Otherwise, abortion would be class issue, but it is not. Middle class and “rich” people are just as likely to commit the deed.
Your attempt to turn abortion (and everything else Mr. Marx) into a class and economic war is pathetic…Should you not be Trolling at http://www.MarxismToday.org ?????
Note 21:
The fact that per capita rates of abortion are highest among women in lower income groups suggests a socio-economic link between poverty and abortion.
No it does not. It suggests a “laziness” link at best. Poverty does not “cause” moral degradation, anymore than poverty “causes” disease, or happiness, etc. This is a moral problem, not a problem to be put into the false categories of class warfare Mr. Marx…
While I would not go so far as to call it “proof”, the data clearly shows an association between abortion rates and poverty.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/20/AR2006112000964.html
Income-level is not the only independent variable driving abortion rates since abortions occur within all economic groups. There would have to be other co-variates at work driving abortion rates after you hold income level constant, and we can speculate that they include things like church-attendance, level of family-support, attitudes of social-peers, and education.
However, the much higher rate of abortions among lower-income women alerts us to the fact that income-level must also be a strong variable. So while we don’t have “proof” that government economic policies reduce abortion rates, we can logically extrapolate that addressing the economic conditions which lead to unwanted pregnancies (lack of education) and discourage men from marrying (unemployment), and women from motherhood (uncertain income, lack of health care), would bring the abortion rate among lower-income women down to a level closer to that of the middle and upper income cohorts.
If our goal is to reduce the abortion rate attacking poverty is helpful but not sufficient. We also need the other measure I listed previously, ending public funding for abortion, providing greater financial incentives for adoption, and treating unwanted pregnancy as a serious public health problem.
Alan Guttmacher Institute? That’s the marketing arm of Planned Parenthood. They do the market surveys and PP builds the clinics. One hand washes the other and a lot of people get rich. (How about putting some of those profits back into the communities they ostensibly help, Dean?)
Dean, your policies helped create the climate where abortion is rampant.
Did you know that PP plants most of their abortion clinics around poorer neighborhoods? They undermine the moral foundations that would serve as a brake on abortion, draw boatloads of cash from the collapse, and masquerade as independent researchers chronicling it all.
Note 21,
Dean, have you ever considered that poor folks are actually targeted by the abortion industry?
http://www.dawneden.com/2007/08/margaret-sanger-is-alive-and-well-and.html
That would be consistent with Planned Parenthood’s philosophy which views the termination, not prevention, of unwanted pregnancies as their goal. But Planned Parenthood’s exploitation of frightened lower-income women is a symptom and not the cause of the greater problem, which is both moral and economic in nature.
I wish there was other research on the association between abortion rates and income level besides the Guttmacher study, since Guttmacher’s ties to Planned Parenthood create doubt on the objectivity of the study. However, unless some methodological flaw is found in their research, and I have seen none mentioned, we have to accept it’s findings. Other independent academic studies I found on Google, referred to the Guttmacher study. Policy should be made on the basis of empirical evidence gathered using scientific research tools, and not speculation, theory or conjecture. Otherwise our efforts and energies will be misdirected and squandered.
Fr. Hans writes: “Alan Guttmacher Institute? That’s the marketing arm of Planned Parenthood. They do the market surveys and PP builds the clinics. One hand washes the other and a lot of people get rich.”
Are you saying that you discount the numbers because they come from a particular organization? You accuse the AG Institute of getting rich off of abortion. But when they publish numbers that could be used as a basis for programs that reduce the abortion rate (did you actually read the article?) you seem to reject the numbers.
You don’t like the idea that Planned Parenthood builds clinics in poor areas (I don’t know if they do or not). But many of their services involve contraception — that can also reduce the abortion rate. If Planned Parenthood is all about getting rich off of abortion, then one wonders why they also offer contraception.
I’m not sure what is the true goal of the anti-abortion lobby. Supposedly it is to reduce or eliminate abortion. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think the goal is not to reduce abortion per se, but rather that only certain strategies consistent with a particular ideology are acceptable.
Christopher, in posts 25 and 26 makes it clear that only certain factors can be considered. Poverty is out, because that is “Marxist” or “class warfare” thinking. Presumably contraception is out, because is might “undermine the moral foundations.” I suppose sex education is also out, for the same reason.
As far as I can tell, for the hard right anti-abortion lobby, the only acceptable strategies for reducing abortion are either
1) young people not having sex (not likely), or
2) driving abortion clinics out of business, or
3) using the power of the State to prohibit abortion
Is that it, or are there other acceptable strategies?
Note 31. Jim writes:
No, I am saying that the Alan Gutmacher “Institute” is as interested in lowering abortion rates as Madonna is (was) in promoting chastity. Both make for nice soundbytes (Madonna could commission some research too), but the fact is that lowering abortion rates hits PP in right where it’s hurts: their wallet. Let’s remember, PP is an industry, and a particularly lucrative one at that, and the greed that drives their grisly business won’t be easily assuaged — their ostensible public relations machine (of which the AGI is part) notwithstanding.
From blackgenocide.org:
Jim concludes:
It’s not that difficult to understand. They want to dupe people into passively accepting their neo-eugenic program. They think the best way to eliminate poverty and single parenthood is by curbing population and offspring.
Fr. Hans writes: “Let’s remember, PP is an industry . . .”
They’re a private, non-profit organization, right?
Fr. Hans: ” . . . and a particularly lucrative one at that . . .”
What does “lucrative” mean? That their revenue exceeds their expenses?
Fr. Hans: ” . . . and the greed that drives their grisly business won’t be easily assuaged — their ostensible public relations machine (of which the AGI is part) notwithstanding.”
What constitutes “greed” in a non-profit organization? For example, the Red Cross gets revenue by selling blood products. Hopefully their revenue exceeds expenses. Would that make them “greedy?”
Fr. Hans quotes: “Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America.”
Both non-profit and for-profit organizations locate their facilities where convenient for their clients and customers. If Minorities are the largerst users of contraception and abortion services, where should PP locate their offices? In the white part of town?
Fr. Hans quotes: “Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population.”
In that sense, I suppose the condom machine located in the bathroom of the restaurant is also a tool of “genocide.” But what a strange definition of “genocide.” But it is touching when social conservatives worry about there being a shortage of black folks. I always thought the problem was too many out of wedlock births. Turns out that the problem is that there aren’t enough.
Fr. Hans: “They think the best way to eliminate poverty and single parenthood is by curbing population and offspring.”
Whereas in your view the best way is . . . . . ?
Here is a solid research paper on the causes of abortion written from someone with a pro-life orientation. It supports the contention that government economic policy can play a beneficial role in reducing the rate of abortion, while measures aimed at reducing access to abortion appear to be less successful.
Reducing Abortion in Kansas: Expanding Jobs and Health Insurance for Families and Opportunities for Children, Joseph Wright, Catholics United for the Common Good.
http://www.catholics-united.org/files/Reducing-Abortion-in-Kansas.pdf
Government action making a difference: House Democrats have introduced H.R. 6067, the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act. The Bill was introduced by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a member of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a member of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus.
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2007/July/Labor_HHS_07_19_07.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:8:./temp/~c109Co4PIH::
This is the first major legislation aimed at reducing the number of abortions in the US. The legislation:
Note 33. Jim writes:
In this case the nature of the work. Selling blood products saves lives. Abortion kills lives.
Such sanitized language, Jim, as if PP is no different than, say, NPR or the local preservation society. And the link between contraception and abortion is interesting too, although dubious. Like PP, you seem to think that abortion is just another form of birth control. PP certainly does, although of course much more profitable. You indicate as much when you write:
In real life the two cannot be conflated. From another direction, the “genocide” that Blacks (correctly) decry is promulgated by rich white folks, ideology and all. Curbside, full service, as it happens.
Restoration of the family. It is the only way. Short of that, the Blacks poor will remain poor, and the White eugenicists will keep on promulgating the poverty and the grisly solutions for it.
Note 35. This indicates that the moral tide is moving against abortion. I can’t see the present Democratic leadership doing much about abortion however, since they are beholden to the hard left on social issues. I would be wary too that abortion isn’t a trojan horse to make Hilary Care morally palatable, which, as we know, would encourage abortions if people like Clinton, Pelosi, Boxer, etc. were ever put in charge of health care.
Abortion in the Black community is a function of poverty, but poverty is not alleviated in the long term by throwing money at it. Rather, long term prosperity also depends on cohesive social bonds, familial and communal, that won’t be restored if social engineering programs like the Great Society (and Planned Parenthood eugenics), are not curbed. Beware of the law of unintended effects. If the state starts taking care of the babies of unwed mothers, you just might end up with more unwed mothers (good for PP’s bottom line) and more babies — if the root causes of poverty are ignored.
Also, I’ll have a bit more confidence in the liberals if they were more eager to criticize the increasing decadence of popular culture. They get so much money from the entertainment industry though (the chief promulgators of the sexualization of youth), that I don’t really believe they will raise their voices.
Fr. Hans: “In this case the nature of the work. Selling blood products saves lives. Abortion kills lives.”
I know what they do, and I’m not questioning your disapproval. But you’re attributing a specific motive to them — greed. That may or may not be the case. But I just don’t see any evidence of that. While they get income from abortions, there are also many expenses — physician, nurses, supplies, medications, insurance, etc. Without knowing the expense component, I don’t know if the revenue exceeds expenses. My humble opinion — your argument is stronger when you don’t attribute motives to them that can’t be proven.
Fr. Hans: “Such sanitized language, Jim, as if PP is no different than, say, NPR or the local preservation society.”
Of course it is not NPR nor are abortions routine birth control. But my point is that they are engaged in a perfectly legal activity, serving women who want the services, whose right to those services — contraception, family planning information, and abortion — has been upheld in the Supreme Court. So we would actually expect them to locate their facilities in those areas that are most convenient to their clients. Again, I understand your moral disapproval, but the fact that they try to pick convenient locations is not in itself a nefarious activity.
Fr. Hans: ” Like PP, you seem to think that abortion is just another form of birth control. PP certainly does, although of course much more profitable.”
Again, without knowing the costs, we have no idea whether it is profitable or not, or to what extent.
Fr. Hans: “From another direction, the “genocide” that Blacks (correctly) decry is promulgated by rich white folks, ideology and all. Curbside, full service, as it happens.”
I don’t understand how women consciously and intentionally using contraception or abortion constitutes “genocide.” It’s an extreme argument, and I don’t know how you would defend that. Again, I think you have a legitimate moral argument against abortion, so why encumber it with weak assertions?
Fr. Hans: “Restoration of the family. It is the only way. Short of that, the Blacks poor will remain poor, and the White eugenicists will keep on promulgating the poverty and the grisly solutions for it.”
That’s the 64 thousand dollar question. How does that happen?
Fr. Hans: “Also, I’ll have a bit more confidence in the liberals if they were more eager to criticize the increasing decadence of popular culture. They get so much money from the entertainment industry though (the chief promulgators of the sexualization of youth), that I don’t really believe they will raise their voices.”
But really, isn’t that more of a corporate thing? My liberal friends don’t go around looking for ways to insert more profanity in rap music. In fact, they don’t like rap music. Just today, one of my atheist co-workers went on two diatribes — one against religion, and one against rap music.
You know, there are a lot of conservatives making money on popular culture. Popular culture is popular because people want it. They pay for it. They vote with their dollars. You want liberals to “criticize” the increasing decadence of popular culture. But who will care what they say? Is anyone in the country not going to watch a movie because John Kerry says not to watch it? For that matter is anyone not going to watch a movie because Rush Limbaugh says not to watch it? Who cares what these politicians and pundits say?
Jim writes:
Jim, it sounds so reasonable doesn’t it? — I mean shelving abortion alongside contraception, family planning information, Supreme Court decisions, even effective placement of their stores. Hey, what’s a dismembered fetus or two?
Of course, if we want to remove the moral onus from the procedure, then we’ll pretend the “fetal remains” did not involve the extinguishing of a human life. We’ll mask the horror under the “family planning” rubric and equate abortion with contraception, and keep it neat and tidy like a Planned Parenthood promotional brochure.
Another Abortion Record at Planned Parenthood: PPFA Tries to
Mask Crucial Role of Abortion to Its Mission and Bottom Line
Fr. Hans writes: “Jim, it sounds so reasonable doesn’t it? — I mean shelving abortion alongside contraception, family planning information, Supreme Court decisions, even effective placement of their stores. Hey, what’s a dismembered fetus or two?”
My point is that just because you disagree with one of their services doesn’t mean that every criticism of them is automatically valid. I mean, if any other company or agency charges money to cover the cost of services, that’s fine. If PP does it, that’s “greed.” Or, take for example your other quote:
This reported percentage, touted relentlessly by PPFA president Cecile Richards, fails to include ancillary services that may be sold along with the abortion and ignores the fact that abortion provides PPFA with a huge–and steady–stream of revenue.
Saying that some service provides a “huge stream” of revenue means almost nothing unless you know what the costs are. I don’t know anything about the finances of stand-alone clinics, but at public hospitals it’s common for expenses to exceed revenue in outpatient clinics. That’s Ok, because the hospital makes money on ancillary services and inpatient referrals from the clinics. But you could talk about the “huge and steady revenue stream” some hospital gets from outpatient services while ignoring the fact that the hospital actually loses money on those services.
Again, this “revenue stream” is presented as something nefarious. Well, guess what. When an organization charges money for a service, there is a revenue stream.
In your view, would abortion be a more moral activity if Planned Parenthood did it for free? If not, then the fact that they charge for it is actually a good thing, yes?
Also, for the extreme right, it seems that any kind of opposition to abortion is automatically valid. Another article you posted denounced PP’s “hypocrisy” over a Missouri law that would have required abortion clinics to be renovated and equipped like outpatient surgical centers.
So here we have conservatives who in any other case denounce “unnecessary governmental regulations driving up the cost of business.” They rail against increases in healthcare costs. Except when it comes to abortion. Then they want unnecessary governmental regulations driving up the cost of business. They want needlessly higher healthcare costs. They want poor people to pay more for services that are legal and even constitutional to receive, that a majority of people in the country think should be legal. The law also would have prohibited anyone involved in an organization that provides abortion from teaching sex education in public schools. So much for free speech.
If a politician votes to subsidize tobacco — a substance that kills some hundreds of thousands of people a year, and that survives as an industry by turning young people into nicotine addicts — that politician is a member in good standing in the church, more than welcome to participate in the Eucharist. But if the same politician also personally opposes abortion but thinks it should be legal, then that’s a terrible thing, and he must be excluded.
For the extreme right, abortion isnt the tail that wags the dog. It’s the tail, the body, the muzzle, the whole dog. And for the sake of opposing it, any other principle can be sacrificed.
Note 40. Jim writes:
I guess, then, we need to gloss over whether or not abortion is an intrinsic evil or if the evil it is just a matter of my opinion. I mean, if abortion is just another PP “service”, then what does it matter if we dismember a fetus or two (and yes, “dismember” is the appropriate term here), or burn off its skin with saline, or, as the antiseptic PP promotional page explained:
“Pregnancy tissue”? George Orwell, call your office.
Jim continues:
Precisely my point. Marketing abortions is nefarious, not because of the marketing, but because of the product marketed.
Not really. Abortion is ground zero in the culture war because it crystalizes the anthropological dimension of that conflict.
Look for my article in the next issue of AGAIN magazine (release date: September 24; I will post it online once it is published), where I examine this anthropological dynamic in more detail.
I hate the phrase “culture war”, because it suggests that we are incapable of overcoming our differences, setting aside the stereotypes that we use to demonize each other, and uniting behind a trancendent and all-encompassing culture of life.
Liberals and Democrats need to recognize, and understand why, many Americans, probably a majority, view abortion as an issue with at least as much moral urgency as slavery or genocide. The argument that the unborn child is not “human”, and therefore ineligible for legal protection, is extremely offensive and abhorent to millions of Americans. As even Justice Blackmun admitted in Roe v. Wade, the assumption that life “begins” at the end of the first trimester is entirely arbitrary and has no basis in science, religion, ethics or philosophy. A morally neutral position towards abortion is therefore unacceptable. While reasonable people can debate the appropriate means for reducing abortion, there should be no doubt that morality requires that reducing it be our urgent objective.
In his famous (and highly recommended) essay, “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell wrote that one of the signs of moral corruption and delusion was the use of neutral-sounding euphemisms to hide ghastly and inhuman acts.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
As Father has pointed out, this is eaxctly the type of language employed by ornanizations like Planned Parenthood when addressing the unborn children whose lives are terminated by abortion procedures.
Unwillingness to recognize the moral urgency of the abortion issue undermines liberals when they try and raise awareness of other moral issues. “Why do you care so much about polar bears, or people without health insurance, for example, but not unborn children?”, is a fair and reasonable question, for which there is really no intelligent answer. Conservatives and Republicans need to understand that they also undermine their own cause and present themselves to the world as hypocrites and liars when they appear to limit their concern for human life to only those humans residing in wombs.
Conservatives and Republicans often appear all too willing to compromise away their respect for the sanctity of human life when it interferes with the sanctity of the free market. A culture that champions the sanctity of human life should therefore embrace all efforts to protect our environment, expand access to health care, and address the systemic and structural causes of poverty, and not subordinate these objectives to the needs of corporate shareholders. A philosophy that embraces profit, selfishness and tax avoidance as its highest values canot be reconciled with the teachings of Christ, which tell us over and over again that we have a responsibility to help our neighbor and that all the possesions we store up on earth are utterly worthless in God’s Kingdom.
Dean the whole issue is dehumanization. We used to have a cultural consensus about what it meant to be human. It was not perfect and indeed had a lot of flaws, but the replacement being proposed in the political realm is wholly unsatisfactory. Unfortunately, the prevalent view of humaness has become what is sensually gratifying whether is is money, power or sex take your pick. Democrats tend to promote the sex and power, while Republicans and Libertarians promote the money and power.
I do not believe that there is one politician with any real power who is not corrupt. I have also come to the conclusion that our society is too far gone and will disolve because of that level of corruption, certainly NOTHING of a political nature will be of any help whatsoever. We are no longer a society that has any concern for what it really means to be human. Historically, such corruption and dissolution is the inevitable result of any political entity.
IMO it is the function of the Church and those of us within her to act prophetically and do what we can to pick up the pieces when the structure finally falls apart.
It’s possible we could see a third party ascendant in the US by 2012. The Republicans look like they’re going to suffer major losses in 2008, especially if we are still in Iraq and have a major recession underway. If crazy Cheney and his neoconservative flying monkeys engineer an attack on Iran, then we willl have an even wider conflict in the middle-east, much more terrorism, and $8 a gallon gasoline. People are really going to be suffering and they will turn with anger on whatever scapegoat they can find, like undocumented immigrants.
Arnold Schwarzenneger, who has little talent when it comes to the day-to-day details of governing, but a good eye for the panoramic big picture, spoke to his fellow California Republicans over the weekend:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/09/08/schwarzenegger-challenges-republicans/
The Democrats, on the other hand, don’t appear to me to have the real courage that’s going to be needed to deal with the very serious problems that will be getting a lot worse as their watch begins after 2008. Whoever assumes power in 2009 is going to have to make a lot of difficult and unpopular choices as recession hits, revenues fall, our military reaches its breaking point, trade and federal budget deficits push the value of the dollar lower, and our health care system’s death spiral accelerates. The irony is that just as the Democrats get their opportunity to expand domestic spending, a deepening recession is going to take away the revenue for them to do so.
Note 42:
I hate the phrase “culture war”, because it suggests that we are incapable of overcoming our differences
Your liberal instincts again. There is no “over coming differences” – there is no compromise on this and many other things. You are either a person at conception, or not. You are either pregnant, or not. There is no compromise position. Some things in life are like that. There are moral absolutes, there is “Truth”. I guess you don’t like St. Paul, or most of the Church Fathers either, who often uses the language of war…
While reasonable people can debate the appropriate means for reducing abortion, there should be no doubt that morality requires that reducing it be our urgent objective.
Wrong. A “reduction” is a compromise. We do not jail murderers to “reduce” murder. “reduction” is weasel talk for compromise because you don’t really believe in Truth. You assuage your position as “realistic”, but at the end of the day it’s yet another fallen compromise…
Dean writes: “I hate the phrase “culture war”, because it suggests that we are incapable of overcoming our differences.”
Christopher responds: “Your liberal instincts again. There is no “over coming differences” – there is no compromise on this and many other things.”
Great. Dude, how’s that “culture war” and demonization of enemies working out for you? Abortion doesn’t happen any more? No? What a surprise.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results. ” — Benjamin Franklin
In my observation much opposition to abortion consists of the opponents emoting and denouncing their enemies. And how good that must feel. And how ineffective.
Right – because we all saw how successful Prohibition was in ending the consumption of alcohol.
Unless you change the underlying culture that leads to unwanted pregnancies, all you are going to do is chase the abortion industry underground where it will be less safe and women will be harmed too. The we will have compounded the tragedy.
Mr. Scourtes #47:
“Right – because we all saw how successful Prohibition was in ending the consumption of alcohol.”
Abortion is not alcohol. Abortion is murder, at least according to the Church and also, I would argue, according to proper reasoning. The potential that some or many people would violate a prohibition against abortion is not a valid reason for the state to condone or legalize the practice.
About a third of taxpayers cheat on income taxes. Would you argue that we should legalize that practice, which is arguably less serious than taking a life?
Mr. Holman #46:
“In my observation much opposition to abortion consists of the opponents emoting and denouncing their enemies. And how good that must feel. And how ineffective.”
In my experience and from what I see in the press and pop culture, the supporters of abortion are quite effective in making emotive statements and vicious denunciations of their opponents. I have observed plenty of emotion on both sides of the issue. On the one side, people believe that millions of lives have been unjustifiably ended. On the other side, people believe that their personal autonomy is sacred and that it is under attack. In both cases,
I don’t think the movements are driven by emotion, but by the underlying philosophies. I would argue that the opposition to abortion is driven by a certain view of what it is to be human, of what it means to be alive, and of what is right and wrong – not by raw emotion.
note 47:
Right – because we all saw how successful Prohibition was in ending the consumption of alcohol.
As Mr. George points out, there are some things in life call for one sort of thing, and others for another sort of thing. Sins are that way too. For someone who references the Roman Catholic’s allot, of course you should know this. But you don’t actually understand the RC teaching, you just clip it in that middle school debate sort of way…;)
Unless you change the underlying culture that leads to unwanted pregnancies, all you are going to do is chase the abortion industry underground where it will be less safe and women will be harmed too.
Which is EXACTLY where it belongs, in the underworld, the seedy, creepy side of town, where despair, desperation, and hopelessness is (almost) the only thing in view. It belongs to those who, despite having a cell phone, air conditioning, and a car, you would call “poor” (poor in spirit no doubt) and are on their 5 pregnancy by the 4 loveless father, and who seek out a crack infested cousin to use a hanger to “abort” the child within them. It belongs here – this is where the “abortion industry” should be. The Devil walks too and fro on the earth, and some places he visits more often than others. We can not do anything about this, but we can (with God’s help) put abortion where it belongs.
The we will have compounded the tragedy.
Wrong. Darkness is darkness, you “compound” darkness by making places where the light should be, into the dark. Your view is what compounds the darkness, not outlawing abortion. Outlawing abortion shines the light in more places, limiting the darkness to the underworld (where it belongs).
In a way, you Dean are like an adviser to Pontius Pilate, advising him on how to “reduce” crucifixions. Pontius knows in his heart that it is wrong, as he says “what evil has He done?” but you are more attuned to the crowd crying “Barrabbas”! You would have the crucifixions continue, until you can convince the crowd to lay aside their sin. Problem is, the crowd has suffered a little thing called the Fall…
Dean’s statement in #47 that because people do not obey a law the law should be abolished is anarchic. It is the logical result of the political philosophy of the day regardless of party, i.e, “If you want power, give the ‘people’ what they want” Our politics have devolved into nothing more than bread and circuses. The only difference is which bread should be given to which part of the populace and what kind of circus should we mount today, we even have gladiators. The result: corruption, anarchy, mob rule and violence. In such a milleu abortion may seem to be a rational act of self-preservation, just as sex and drugs may seem to be the only recourse for a little surcease. Work is only for the stupid. There is no point in building for the future as there will be none.
Sooner or later, folks will want order and accept tyranny to provide it because we have refused to realize that our only freedom comes from a loving obedience to God which is true self-government. “Rights” only exist in a context of a divine order. The continued legal and societal masturbation of individual rights being supreme only leads to no one having any rights.
The ultimate result is that I have the right to kill anyone I can simply because I feel like it and I have no protection from anyone killing me except my own strength. This is the world that the ideas of Jim, Dean, Brent even Glen leads toward. It is the politics of self-destruction no matter what it is labeled. The “choices” with which we are presented in the political arena are all false. When we argue about their relative merits we only add to the escalating evaporation or society.
There is no merit to abortion, none. Anyone who holds otherwise is participating in evil. The same goes for those who believe that unrestricted sexuality is healthy. The unrestricted quest for worldly accumulation, etc., etc. We all know these things. It is only our own arrogance and fear that allow us to act differently. There is not one person posting here or reading the posts who does not participate in the evil of the day, not one. Politics will only ameliorate the evil when each of us withdraws a little from our own participation in the evil. We cannot expect politics, society or the Church to do what we refuse to do. Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude here and in our society is quite the reverse. Many scream “individual autonomy” and demand mass action to “right wrongs”. It is stupid, illogical and futile. It is the little choices that each of us make every day, minute by minute that matter. If we make those choices in accord God, the politics will take care of itself. If we do not make those choices in accord with God, well…we can see the result of that.
Come on Michael, you know better than that. If our objective is a significant reduction in the abortion rate why wouldn’t we want to employ the methods most likely to result in acceptance and success, rather those most likely to create resistance and opposition and yield the least success
Read “Reducing Abortion in Kansas: Expanding Jobs and Health Insurance for Families and Opportunities for Children, Joseph Wright, Catholics United for the Common Good”, which I posted above in number 34.
http://www.catholics-united.org/files/Reducing-Abortion-in-Kansas.pdf
In your home state of Kansas, the researcher found:
You read Christopher’s comment. He isn’t concerned about doing about the addressing the causes of abortion at all. In his exact words, he just wants to move it to:
That is a shameful, hateful comment by someone who has twisted the loving God we worship into a vengeful, mishapen symbol of punishment and malice. He doesn’t want to help women with unplanned pregnancies considering abortion, he wants to make them suffer more.
Jim Holmon and I, on the other hand, argue for targeting abortion as a public health problem and focusing a number of public policy initiatives at it in a concerted and systematic manner. Through educational campaigns aimed at young people we can promote abstenence as a first line of defense and contraception as a secondary line of defense. We can provide much stronger financial incentives for unwed mothers to use maternity homes and consider adoption. We can provide improved social services for women who are the tragets of sexual abuse. We should eliminate public funding for all abortions not medically neccesary and divert funding for family planning that now go towards abortion, towards maternity homes and adoption services instead.
Those are initiatives likely to win support from a large majority of Americans and result in meaningful reduction in abortion rates. Do you want sound and fury, or results?
note 50:
It is the logical result of the political philosophy of the day regardless of party, i.e, “If you want power, give the ‘people’ what they want”
Michael, perhaps we have found Dean’s nickname: Pontius Pilate
Interesting how he washes his hands of the blood of the unborn by arguing for a “reduction”…sad…
note 51:
Come on Michael, you know better than that.
You should know better, but you do not. What Church do you attend again Pontius?
Come on Michael, you know better than that. If our objective is a significant reduction in the abortion rate why wouldn’t we want to employ the methods most likely to result in acceptance and success, rather those most likely to create resistance and opposition and yield the least success
Your just repeating your comprise strategy here. A “compromise” is not possible when it comes to unborn life. Either you are a person or not, thus either it is murder or not. “reducing” murder is silly, particularly since you confuse external circumstances with moral choice, just like Marx. Perhaps your nickname should be “Pontius Marx”…
That is a shameful, hateful comment
Only in your non-Christian worldview. In your material world view, man is not made in the Image and Likeness (and thus is free – free to choose right or wrong) but is a victim of his circumstances. Thus, as you say, abortion is not chosen, but “caused” – caused by external realities to the person (his perceived wealth or lack there of, etc.).
Dean, seriously, how long are you going to continue like this? Don’t take it from me, take it from Michael, Fr. Jacobse, Missourian, all the others who have told you do not think like a Christian. Your basic understanding on this issue is in error, because your basic understanding about Man and his freedom is in error. You claim Jim as an ally, who explicitly rejects any Orthodox Christian notion of the human person! Really Dean, we ask again: What is man?
Mr. Scourtes #51:
“Jim Holmon and I, on the other hand, argue for targeting abortion as a public health problem and focusing a number of public policy initiatives at it in a concerted and systematic manner….”
Tax evasion is a less serious matter than abortion, and is also very common. Why not legalize tax evasion, and attempt to pursuade people to pay their taxes through educational intiatives? Why not? Because tax evasion is stealing (causing financial harm to honest taxpayers) and should not be condoned or even tolerated by legalization, even though lots of folks are doing it. Well, abortion is the unjustified taking of human life. That is reason enough for it to be illegal.
Also, you write as if abortion rates would remain almost unchanged if it were banned. They would only remain high if a ban were not enforced. The most likely case is that the number of abortions would be very greatly reduced if abortion were made illegal.
D. George writes: “Well, abortion is the unjustified taking of human life. That is reason enough for it to be illegal.”
The problem is that there is no moral consensus on the issue. In fact, a majority of people think it should be legal. They largely reject the idea that the fetus is a person, especially in the earliest stages. The belief in the personhood of the fetus depends largely on religious or philosophical beliefs that many people do not hold.
As far as making abortion illegal, the issue is not whether the anti-abortion side is “right” or not. The issue is whether something should be made law just because a number of sincere religious people have strong beliefs about it. All sincere, thoughtful people think that their beliefs are true. But that’s not a sufficient reason for putting those beliefs into the law. For example, some Catholics and fundamentalists are extremely opposed to artificial birth control. So should that be outlawed? Should eating meat be banned because some sincere vegetarians think it should be?
The key to putting things into law is the existence of a consensus. Currently, the national consensus on abortion is on the other side of the issue, that it should be legal and available.
The key to having a law that is actually obeyed is having a very strong, almost unanimous consensus. Take bank robberies, for example. In 2006 there were about 7,200 bank robberies out of a population of over 300 million people. Nobody suggests making bank robberies legal, and the number of offenders is miniscule.
The consensus on drug use is not as strong. Some — even Christians — recommend decriminalizing many drugs. (Even recently in this venue.) In 2004 the CDC reported that almost 8 percent of the population used drugs in the month prior to the survey. So there are probably 20 million people in the U.S. using illegal drugs on a regular basis. And that’s even with fairly harsh sentences in effect, drug testing in the workplace, anti-drug programs, treatment programs, and so on. In 2000 the FBI reported almost 1.6 million arrests for various drug abuse violations. 1,900 drug labs were seized. 2.8 million pounds of drugs were seized, including 234,000 pounds of cocaine and 3,000 pounds of heroin — drugs that are smuggled from overseas. A significant amount of drug abuse occurs with prescription drugs that are diverted into street sales.
http://www.drugtestcenter.com/Drugs_and_Crime/enforcement.htm
So — let’s say that abortion is completely illegal tomorrow. What happens? Well, you’ve just created an instant black market for Levonorgestrel (Plan B), Methotrexate, and Misoprostol. You think Planned Parenthood targets poor neighborhoods? Just wail until the abortion drug dealers show up — with contaminated drugs and dirty needles, systemic infections, and deaths. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Dean. Abortion as a public health matter? I doubt that you even know what that means. Nothing in anything you or Jim have written on abortion shows any real knowledge of public health. My father was the one of the most innovative and intelligent directors of a local public health department in the country for over 25 years. He did work on abortion as a public health problem. The foundation of his approach was to keep Planned Parenthood out of Wichita. Then he attempted to work with each woman individually using the public health nurses he trained and the neighborhood clinics he established. His goal was to teach folks how to manage their lives, exercise discipline, create order, become literate so that they would recognize that abortion was wrong and have the means to act in a moral manner. He was successful as long as he was director. Within three months of his forced retirement, Planned Parenthood was in town doing their dirty work and all of Dad’s programs jettisoned.
The Democrats and their genocidal allies will never allow abortion or anything else that they can politicize to be dealt with as public health matter. Neither will the Republicans. Simple reason: they will loose power and money if they do.
Jim, IMO has no interest in reducing abortion. He dosen’t even see it as a problem. The only thing he is correct about is that we Christians are too timid in our opposition to it. He knows that working through the normal political structure will have little if any effect. If we were really serious we’d take non-standard direct polticial action. However, risking RICO prosecution is a lot to risk. Trust me there would be no NAACP or any other civil rights organization had RICO been around during the civil rights marches. To actively oppose abortion in this country is considered racketeering and a corrupt practice.
If Bush were serious about politically tackling abortion, he’d issue an executive order prohibiting the application of RICO to abortion protest organizations. If the Republicans in Congress were serious they would have modified or repealled RICO.
To the extent that you have faith in ANY politcial organization, party of agenda, Dean you are deluded. That fact that you constantly mistake the democrat platform for Orthodox doctrine is just sick.
Mr. Holman #55:
“The problem is that there is no moral consensus on the issue. In fact, a majority of people think it should be legal.”
First, while a majority of people think it should be legal in rare cases, a majority also thinks abortion on demand (what we have now) should be illegal.
Second, while I am sure opposition to a ban on abortion is consistent with your principles, I was addressing Mr. Scourtes, who presumably believes that abortion is a moral evil, at least in most cases. If, as an Orthodox Christian, he believes about abortion what the Orthodox Church believes, he believes it is an unjustified taking of a human life (i.e., murder). So, I was wondering why he would not support a law against abortion, treating pregnancies as a health problem instead. Even more confusing is that (I suspect) he would oppose legalization of tax evasion, which is a much less serious crime (again, assuming abortion is a form of murder) that is more widely practiced.
“All sincere, thoughtful people think that their beliefs are true. But that’s not a sufficient reason for putting those beliefs into the law.”
Yes, it is sufficient reason. All law is based on opinions of what is true. There is no morally neutral law. We have laws against murder because someone thinks murder is wrong. We have farm subsidies because someone thinks that it is right to have them. We have speed limits because someone thinks it is immoral to endanger the lives of other drivers just to save time.
The law may be practical, and we should be prudential in our application of it. As it pertains to abortion, there is nothing wrong with advocating for a ban, and trying to see it enacted through persuasion, any more than there was something wrong with abolitionists who advocated restrictions on slavery even though there was no “moral consensus” regarding that issue at the time.
“The key to putting things into law is the existence of a consensus.”
Do you support laws against tax evasion? Tax evasion is very common, even moreso than your example of recreational drug use. Because there is no strong consensus about paying one’s taxes, should people be able to exercise a “right to choose” whether or not they must support the policies of their government?
And, in the special case of abortion, there was no consensus to legalize the practice on a federal level. Instead, a fiat ruling by Supreme Court justices legislated the “right” out of thin air. If you are so concerned about the existence of a consensus, you should advocate the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and the passage of federal legislation that legalizes abortion on demand in all states.
#55 Jim Holman
You wrote:
The key to putting things into law is the existence of a consensus.
Pretty amazing statement considering the topic and constitutional issues involved.
But it’s not even true putting the constitutional aspect aside. The key to making a law is to have a democratic majority.
While it is true that a law which virtually no one obeys is probably a bad law, it is not true that if some people don’t like a law it should be repealed. If that were true it would be nearly impossible to pass any law since a certain fraction of people could claim that there was “no consensus”.
Framing abortion as a public health issue is disengenuous when you consider that the Democratic leadership wants to expand funding to promote abortion in third world countries. Its only function is to remove the moral onus of abortion which pro-arbortionists, to their chagrin, are feeling more and more as the culture shifts against it.
The exception would be Democrats for Life and other liberals (Nat Henthoff for example) who correctly understand that abortion is a moral issue first, and that any definition of public health must include the unborn child as well as the mother.
My dad called what he did community health. The whole concept was to strengthen human beings to function more healthly within a community. He had an intuitive understanding that was quite sophisticated. It cannot be achieved within a bureaucratic model but requires the skill and compassion of highly trained, highly motivated people meeting face to face with people in need. A truly holistic approach. As he practiced it, most people just didn’t get it. At the base of it was an anthopological understanding that was profoundly Orthodox. He defined it in much more “scientific” terms as the interrelationship between an organisim and its environment. He understood and acted upon the understanding that every action has a consequence upon the entire community. Unhealthy actions resulted in an unhealthy community. It is in everbody’s best interest to act in ways that benefit others. One does not achieve health by denying the consequences or attempting to buffer the consequences of unhealthy behavior. Behavior must change for the health of the community to improve. Abortion is unhealthy so the mother, the father, and the extended family must be strengthen to allow a responsible approach to conception, birth and raising of children.
It is, IMO, the exact opposite of every political approach I have ever seen and certainly is profoundly at odds with the individual rights or welfare state approach most folks gravitate toward. My dad’s approach enhanced the human dignity and freedom of the individual people by placing them firmly and irrevocably in the context of the community at large realizing the reciprocal responsibilities of each to the other.
Dean’s idea of “public health” is simply a way to atomize, relativise, amoralize and dehumanize. My dad’s approach was just the opposite. So once again Dean proves he has no idea of what he is talking about because he fails to engage the anthropology of his own spiritual heritage, trading it for the pottage of secular humanistic garbage.
No one answered Jim’s question asking what has been accomplished by all the chest-thumping, posturing, demonizing, and polarizing. The answer you were too embarassed to provide – not much.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to attack the problem of abortion in a scientific, systematic and thoughtful manner, and I certainly don’t apologize for suggesting it. You identify the causes of a certain undesirable behavior and then you develop strategies to alter the conditions that lead to that behavior. Yes some of those causes of abortion are moral and cultural and the pro-Life movement is correct to address those attitudes directly. However, there are other causes of abortion are social and economic.
Social causes of abortion include a culture and media directed at young people that glorifies sexual activity, and a lack of information by young people about absitinence and contaception. Among middle and upper-class there may be a such a social stigmatization, or family disapproval associated with unwed pregnancy that the young mother’s fear of embarrassment and approbation is greter than her aversion to the abortion procedure.
Economically, we should consider that there is a level of poverty so deep and profound that it creates a hoplessness and apathy in people that leads to imlessness and disregard for the consequences of actions. Why plan for a future from which you have no positive expectations. Young men without jobs or prospects are more likely to run from their paternal responsibilities. Young women without a husband or parenting partner, job or financial security may consider a child to be a responsibility they are incapable of bearing.
We have been discussing the underlying “nature or nurture” debate as if it was an Either-Or proposition but when I read the Gospels I get the impression that Christ saw both as important.
To the unfortunate, Christ stresses nature, reminding the poor in his audience that the God cares for the birds and arrays the flowers in colorful splendor will take care of them as well. the debtor who is forgiven must learn to forgive others who are in his debt as well.
However, to the fortunate Christ emphasizes nurture, reminding his audience that neglect, exploitation and oppression of the poor create conditions that allow evil to thrive. I think Christ was completely aware of the capacity of cruelty, hardship and neglect to warp and harden people making them vulnerable and suceptible to evil impulses, actions and thoughts. To protect the poor therefore, Christ told his listerners that what they do for, or to, the least of their neighbor they do to Him.
So while abortion is a moral and cultureal issue, there are also social and economic tools sitting on the table that we can use not only to reduce the rate of abortion, but also to create a consensus towards positive action, instead of a polarizing stalemate.
Mr. Scourtes #61:
“No one answered Jim’s question asking what has been accomplished by all the chest-thumping, posturing, demonizing, and polarizing. The answer you were too embarassed to provide – not much.”
Answer: I think a lot has been accomplished, and I would not characterize most of the pro-life movement as “chest-thumping, posturing, demonizing, and polarizing,” a description which is more appropriately applied to the greater portion of the pro-abortion camp. Opinion used to be in favor of unlimited abortion on demand, but is has shifted in favor of restrictions on abortion with exemptions for some special cases.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to attack the problem of abortion in a scientific, systematic and thoughtful manner, and I certainly don’t apologize for suggesting it.”
I don’t hear anyone arguing with this, although people may disagree about what is scientific, systematic, and thoughtful and whether it requires massive federal spending programs.
“Yes some of those causes of abortion are moral and cultural and the pro-Life movement is correct to address those attitudes directly.”
I’m glad to hear this. Do you support the pro-life movement’s calls for legislation restricting abortion?
“Social causes of abortion include… a lack of information by young people about absitinence and contaception.”
Close to 100% of young people know about abstinence and contraception (unless they are living in a cave without television, friends, or internet). Unfortunately, this knowledge does not in and of itself lead to responsible behavior.
“Economically, we should consider that there is a level of poverty so deep and profound that it creates a hoplessness and apathy in people that leads to imlessness and disregard for the consequences of actions.”
You make it sound like people are starving on the streets. There may be a few cases in this country, but the sort of poverty you mention is exceedingly rare. The disregard for consequences of actions is much more strongly related to hedonism, in my opinion, than to poverty. And, lower income can be a consequence of such hedonism and lack of discipline.
“…there are also social and economic tools sitting on the table that we can use not only to reduce the rate of abortion, but also to create a consensus towards positive action…”
There aren’t just tools sitting on the table, there are tools being put into action. There are adoption agencies, lots of people willing to adopt, churches willing to help, and crisis pregnancy centers (run by volunteers) all over the place.
We do not need to use social and economic tools of the State, though. We, as a Church, have the ability to change this. Maybe, instead of letting this innocents perish, we could set up many orphanages or have an Orthodox adoption program. Of course, we should keep being a witness to society and telling them that abortion/unclean sex is immoral, but I think, that when society sees part of an entire generation saved, and the things they can achieve, they will rejoice. It will not be easy, as we are a relatively small community when compared to the large amount of abortions occurring. However, if we, voluntarily and unforced by the State, open our wallets and our hearts, what can we not achieve?
Note 61. Dean asks:
This is choice. For decades the hard core abortion on demand crowd has been feverishly laboring to make the abortion of unborn children morally palatable, and now that the concensus shifts against them, those who pointed out the moral travesty are posturers, demonizers, and polarizers. Call it the non-demonization demonization.
Shake your paternalism Dean. It’s the same “white man’s burden” thinking that gave us the Great Society, justifies the mass abortion of black children, and more. The poor don’t exist to make liberals feel good.
Poverty has to be addressed on a family and cultural level. The moral lawlessness that glorifies licentious chaos over moral self-ordering has to be attacked. (Difficult for Democrats given their dependence on entertainment industry money.) Families have to be stabilized, a job for churches. The streets have to become safe meaning lawbreakers have to be taken off them. Education has to improve for long term benefits which means the choke hold that politicians have over the school systems (all Democratic btw), has to be broken.
You’ll have to excuse my cynicism here Dean, but your ideas are shopworn and the moral exhortations tiresome. The ideas have been tried and failed, and the exhortations are, well, used up.
Mr. Scourtes #61:
“No one answered Jim’s question asking what has been accomplished by all the chest-thumping, posturing, demonizing, and polarizing. The answer you were too embarassed to provide – not much.”
Answer: I think a lot has been accomplished, and I would not characterize most of the pro-life movement as “chest-thumping, posturing, demonizing, and polarizing,” a description which is more appropriately applied to the greater portion of the pro-abortion camp. Opinion used to be in favor of unlimited abortion on demand, but is has shifted in favor of restrictions on abortion with exemptions for some special cases.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to attack the problem of abortion in a scientific, systematic and thoughtful manner, and I certainly don’t apologize for suggesting it.”
I don’t hear anyone arguing with this, although people may disagree about what is scientific, systematic, and thoughtful and whether it requires massive federal spending programs.
“Yes some of those causes of abortion are moral and cultural and the pro-Life movement is correct to address those attitudes directly.”
I’m glad to hear this. Do you support the pro-life movement’s calls for legislation restricting abortion?
“Social causes of abortion include… a lack of information by young people about absitinence and contaception.”
Close to 100% of young people know about abstinence and contraception (unless they are living in a cave without television, friends, or internet). Unfortunately, this knowledge does not in and of itself lead to responsible behavior.
“Economically, we should consider that there is a level of poverty so deep and profound that it creates a hoplessness and apathy in people that leads to imlessness and disregard for the consequences of actions.”
You make it sound like people are starving on the streets. There may be a few such cases in this country, but the sort of poverty you mention is exceedingly rare. The disregard for consequences of actions is much more strongly related to hedonism, in my opinion, than to poverty. And, lower income can be a consequence of such hedonism and lack of discipline.
“…there are also social and economic tools sitting on the table that we can use not only to reduce the rate of abortion, but also to create a consensus towards positive action…”
There aren’t just tools sitting on the table, there are tools being put into action. There are adoption agencies, lots of people willing to adopt, churches willing to help, and crisis pregnancy centers (run by volunteers) all over the place.
D George writes: “First, while a majority of people think it should be legal in rare cases, a majority also thinks abortion on demand (what we have now) should be illegal.”
Here’s the latest polling results on abortion from a variety of polls:
Abortion should be generally available, or available with stricter limits: 73%
————————-
Legal in all or most cases: 52%
Illegal in all cases: 17%
————————–
Agree with Roe v. Wade: 62%
————————–
You can see all the results here: http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
There simply is no consensus in the country for banning abortion.
D. George: “All law is based on opinions of what is true. There is no morally neutral law. We have laws against murder because someone thinks murder is wrong.”
It’s not just that “someone” thinks murder is wrong, but because everyone except sociopaths thinks murder is wrong.
D George: “And, in the special case of abortion, there was no consensus to legalize the practice on a federal level. Instead, a fiat ruling by Supreme Court justices legislated the “right” out of thin air.”
In 1973 the decision in Roe v. Wade was approved by 52%, opposed by 47%, with 7 percent uncertain. While a Supreme Court decision is not a popularity contest, I don’t believe that the Roe v. Wade decision would have been possible without substantial public support.
Thirty years after Roe fewer than 20 percent of people want a total ban on abortion. That’s probably close to the percentage of people who believe that all abortion is murder. I do not see how you’re going to be able to turn that into a majority or even a significant minority.
That’s because a ban on abortion would strike at the American concept of personal autonomy. Let’s be honest — laws against abortion are really all about telling other people what to do. In general we don’t do that unless a) it involves some civil necessity (e.g., taxation, traffic laws, military draft, patent and copyright law) or b) an overwhelming moral consensus.
In the case of abortion that kind of consensus simply does not exist. I doubt that it will ever exist. Even in the Catholic church there is only modest support for a total ban on abortion:
Overall, 49 percent of Catholics did not agree that all abortions should be illegal. Fifty percent agreed that all abortions should be illegal, and one percent was unsure.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/dec/06121203.html
If Roe v. Wade were over-turned (as it should be) regulation of abortion would revert to the States. However, this would not neccesarily result in an end to abortions. USA Today analyzed how:
‘Roe v. Wade’: The divided states of America
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-16-abortion-states_x.htm
So even from a political standpoint, a series of small incremental moves to reduce abortion stand a much better chance of success than a full frontal assault. My own recommendation would be to go after Planned Parenthood’s money source. Create Christian or faith-based alternative family planning centers that sponsor maternity homes and provide adoption assistance and work in Congress to re-direct the family planning-related public funding that goes to PP towards these new centers instead.
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, some states would become abortion factories, others would outlaw it completely. This is probably how it should be because abortion, being a profoundly moral affair, will ultimately be reduced by appeals to the conscience.
The federal government should get out of subsidizing the abortion business; PP needs to come under much greater scrutiny than it has, particularly concerning underage abortions, Democrats need to recover their moral center and jetisson the abortion on demand crowd that took over leadership after the McGovern loss, — there is a lot to do, IOW. Democrats have to face the fact too that they have aborted away much of their potential constituency: The Roe Effect: The right to abortion has diminished the number of Democratic voters.
Economically, we should consider that there is a level of poverty so deep and profound that it creates a hoplessness and apathy in people that leads to imlessness and disregard for the consequences of actions
Where do you get such ideas? (answer: materialism – false anthropology).
Christianly, there is no hard link between poverty (or wealth) and morality, hope, love, charity, etc. Indeed, to the extant there is a link, it is the exact opposite as you have it. As the poor women and the temple, and ” it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” demonstrate, it is actually “easier” to the right thing, to live a moral life, if one is poor than if one is rich. Poverty (or wealth) does not cause abortion.
Repeat after me: Poverty (or wealth) does not “cause” abortion
Mr. Holman #65:
“Here’s the latest polling results on abortion from a variety of polls:”
The same poll conducted half a year earlier found only 45% support abortion in all or most cases. Most of the polls listed by the source to which you refer suggest the country is closely divided, and perhaps more sympathetic to the pro-life side. There is a lot of confusion regarding Roe v. Wade, however, which explains majority support for the decision despite not nearly as much support for the ramifications of the decision. In any case, whether the country is split near 50%, or whether it is slightly leaning pro-life, there has been a definite shift in public opinion since the 1970s when the pro-life side was clearly in the minority.
“While a Supreme Court decision is not a popularity contest, I don’t believe that the Roe v. Wade decision would have been possible without substantial public support.”
I agree with this statement. But, should the court create legislation (a violation of its purpose) based on a narrow majority opinion? If moral consensus against abortion was lost in the 1960s and, it should have been legalized through the Congress (even that bothers me because the issue really does belong at the state level).
“Let’s be honest — laws against abortion are really all about telling other people what to do. In general we don’t do that unless a) it involves some civil necessity (e.g., taxation, traffic laws, military draft, patent and copyright law) or b) an overwhelming moral consensus.”
Yes, I agree that laws against abortion are meant to prevent people from obtaining abortions. I stated previously that all laws are about telling other people what to do. But no, we don’t need a moral consensus to do so. First, one will not find talk of the necessity of moral consensus in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers. It was not a consideration when our system of government was devised. Second, I think this argument is too convenient. For example, the left wing likes “hate crimes” legislation, which is really legislation that condemns certain thoughts. There is no consensus regarding such legislation, but it has passed in several places. Also, there are bans on certain drugs that are quite popular. In California there is a ban on sending horses to be butchered for meat in Europe, and there are bans on bear hunting in some states. Again, more legislation that is meant solely to tell others what to do.
“That’s because a ban on abortion would strike at the American concept of personal autonomy.”
No, it would only strike at the concept of personal autonomy, and one that would not have been found prior to the 1960s, that is common in New England and the West Coast (see #66, Mr. Scourtes).
#66 Mr. Scourtes:
“The result, according to this analysis, would be less a patchwork of laws than broad regional divisions that generally reinforce the nation’s political split.”
There are regional differences already. They would not be stronger if the matter were left to the states, they would just express themselves in legislation, as is appropriate in a federal system of government.
If you worry about internecine strife (and I do not think you need to worry) due to the regional differences concerning abortion, it would be better to leave the matter to the states. That way, one side would not feel unjustly oppressed by the federal government.
Note 68. Christopher writes:
I just finished reading Turning Intellect Into Influence, a book the chronicles the success of right ideas in overturning bad policy. Two notable chapters include the story of James Q. Wilson’s withering, but absolutely accurate critique of the Great Society programs that eventually led a Democratic president (Clinton) to “end welfare as we know it”; and the story of the “Broken Windows Theory” that led to the revitalization of New York (I lived near Manhattan under both Dinkins and Guliani — it was night and day).
A couple of facts: it takes 20 to 30 years for ideas to filter down from the intellectual class (the “shopkeepers of ideas”) to popular culture; before the Great Society the moral fabric of the New York poor was such that even if you performed menial labor, your standing in the community was honorable while the slackard was ostracized — almost the complete opposite today; the prevalent ideas that contribute to the degradation of the public culture had their birth in the sixties and seventies but remained unchallenged for too long, hence our current mess, etc.
A few ideas I had reading the book (not related to the book but worth exploring I think): female abuse in other cultures, such as genital mutilation in Islamic cultures, is most often perpetrated by other women; the aborting of children in America, especially the ideological and moral cover, is most often perpetrated by women (although the abortionists themselves are overwhelmingly male). Not sure what this means precisely, but the reasons behind the relentless promotion of abortion by female political leaders is something worth exploring down the line.
American liberalism is bereft of ideas. We probably need better ideas all around, but the right clearly engages culture with greater creativity and seriousness than the left. Politics is a lagging indicator, but the left’s inability to mount a serious critique of organizations like moveon.org shows an intellectual bankruptcy that renders them captive to the recycled dogma of the 1970’s.
We should never settle for defeatest bromides like “teens will always have sex” and the like. It took thirty years to pornify the culture, but moral conservatives should not accept the cultural degradation as the status quo. If the liberal orthodoxy can be overtuned through right ideas properly presented and defended, so can the cultural degradation. Think back on Solzhenitsyn. Three volumes of one book (the Gulags) decimated (yes, decimated) the Marxist establishment of Europe and laid the intellectual foundations for the collapse of Communism — a moral tour de force.
Democrats need to recover their moral center. Currently there no leaders of moral stature. It will take great courage, many defeats, but morally informed Democrats could easily join ranks with morally informed conservatives to turn back the tide of degradation that afflicts our culture. The rise of “Democrats for Life” gives hope that some Democrats are recovering the soul of their party.
[Sorry is this posts more than once, but I've tried to post it a couple of times, but nothing happened.]
Roe v. Wade is the keystone of a number of Supreme Court cases dealing with the right to privacy. The same logic that was applied to Roe was also applied in these other cases. Were Roe overturned, what you’d see is an attempt to overturn all of these other cases, all of which deal with rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. So there would be a kind of “domino theory” at work. The dominos are
Right to first trimester abortion (Roe v. Wade)
Right to privacy in the bedroom (Lawrence v. Texas)
Right of unmarried couples to birth control information (Eisenstadt v. Baird)
Right of married couples to birth control information (Griswold v. Connecticut)
Right to procreate (Skinner v. Oklahoma)
Right to marry without regard to race (Loving v. Virginia)
Right to send children to private schools (Pierce v. Society of Sisters)
Right of parents to teach children a foreign language (Meyer v. Nebraska)
Again, none of these rights are specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and the same reasoning, that these rights follow from a more general right to privacy implied by the 14th and 9th Amendments, was applied to all.
What “right” means in all of these cases is having freedom from government intrusion in these decisions. To say that there is no right to abortion is to assert that government can force a woman to carry a child to term, whether or not she wants to, under penalty of fine or imprisonment. If the government can do that, then presumably it could order the woman to take nutritional supplements or medications to bring the pregnancy to term. It could order a woman to have six months of bed rest, to exercise, not exercise, quit work, or whatever else might be needed to bring the pregnancy to term.
If privacy does not include the right of a pregnant woman not to have nine
months of her life controlled by the government, then surely privacy does not include any of the other listed rights.
When these cases are overturned, what you’d end up with is a mish-mash of wildly varying state laws. In one state condoms would be available in any drug store or pharmacy. In another state the Reproduction Police would be searching through people’s trash looking for used condoms as evidence of criminal birth control. In one state unmarried people could cohabit. In another state unmarried couples would be arrested by the Morality Police for kissing in public without a marriage license. In one state everyone would be free to marry. In another state blacks and whites could not marry.
You think I’m exaggerating? All of the above-mentioned court cases were decided in the 20th century. We take all of these things for granted now, but without a right to privacy all of those are called into question.
It’s amazing to me that people who have such a distrust of government
intervention have come to embrace it in the most personal areas of life. You don’t like Roe v. Wade? Great, knock it over and see what else falls down.
Mr. Holman #73:
“It’s amazing to me that people who have such a distrust of government intervention have come to embrace it in the most personal areas of life. You don’t like Roe v. Wade? Great, knock it over and see what else falls down.”
I don’t necessarily have a problem with government intervention. I have a problem with the Supreme Court exceeding its constitutional mandate and making laws up out of thin air. The people should rule on the decisions you cited, through their representative government. Sure, the people can make mistakes, but so can the court, and the court by its very design becomes tyrranical if it exceeds its constitutional mandate.
As for the matter of privacy with regard to abortion, one cannot expect people who think that unborn children are human beings in every sense of the word can be expected to support the “right” of a woman to kill an unborn child because it is a personal decision. Would repealing abortion-on-demand at the federal level cause an automatic descent down a slippery slope? Perhaps, but the proper remedy, if the nation overwhelmingly found some state laws to be undue invasions of privacy, would be to ammend the Constitution.
Note 73. Jim writes:
Yes, I do think you are exaggerating. Further, for someone who defends “hate crimes” — where what one thinks becomes fodder for prosecution — the exaggerations are also disengenuous.
D. George writes: “I don’t necessarily have a problem with government intervention. I have a problem with the Supreme Court exceeding its constitutional mandate and making laws up out of thin air.”
Or more precisely, I think you would describe it as making up rights out of thin air. But I would have to disagree. I’m certainly not a Constitutional scholar, but I’ve always been impressed by the 9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
There was an initial opposition to the Bill of Rights, for fear that any rights not enumerated therein would be seen as not existing. Madison expressed that concern:
It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system . . .
The 9th Amendment was added precisely in order to address this concern. In other words, the Constitution itself acknowledges that the people possess rights that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. Thus these rights are not made up out of thin air, but are understood as existing though not enumerated.
D. George: “The people should rule on the decisions you cited, through their representative government. Sure, the people can make mistakes, but so can the court, and the court by its very design becomes tyrranical if it exceeds its constitutional mandate.”
But a vote of a majority of the people can become tyrannical through in effect revoking the legitimate rights of others. In other words, I should not be able by my vote to eliminate your right to send your children to a private school, or to teach your children another language.
D. George: “As for the matter of privacy with regard to abortion, one cannot expect people who think that unborn children are human beings in every sense of the word can be expected to support the ‘right’ of a woman to kill an unborn child because it is a personal decision.”
I would state it differently. I would say that the right to be protected is the right of a woman not to have the government control nine months of her life. More fundamentally, the right to be protected is the right of the woman to decide for herself the morality of abortion — whether the fetus or fertilized egg is a person, whether to obtain an abortion in the case of rape, and so on. The other option is to place those decisions, as Madison said, “in the hands of the General Government.”
Fr. Hans writes: “Yes, I do think you are exaggerating.”
I don’t think so. As I mentioned before, all of the cases I cited were decided in the 20th century, which means that they involved active, enforced laws on the books.
Fr. Hans: “Further, for someone who defends “hate crimes” — where what one thinks becomes fodder for prosecution — the exaggerations are also disengenuous.”
I support hate crimes laws because I believe that a hate crime constitutes a kind of domestic terrorism. Ultimately it is an attack not just on a person or persons, but on an entire segment of society. This is especially true in the case of racist or neo-nazi groups — groups that can be highly organized, well-funded, actively recruiting followers, training followers in violent techniques, and encouraging them to commit violence.
Such laws can certainly be misused. But misuse of law involving intention or purpose is not limited to hate crimes law. (E.g., RICO law, that was reformed in 1990 because of abuses.)
In the event that hate crimes laws were misused, I would support reform. More importantly, I’m not going to go to the barricades over hate crimes laws. I think they are a good idea, but if we didn’t have them I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
In any case, I understand that traditional Christianity, especially as expressed in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, uniformly opposes abortion. But it is not clear to me that a Christian is obligated to support a particular solution to the issue. There are many ways a Christian can oppose abortion that do not involve the coercive power of the State.
#73 Jim Holman
You wrote
You unwittingly exposed the simple fact that negates all your fancy arguments.
Mr. Holman #76:
“Thus these rights are not made up out of thin air, but are understood as existing though not enumerated.”
In other words, the justices should not strike down rights granted at the state level that are not enumerated in the Constitution, short of an ammendment being adopted to strike down such rights. This is why, even though I am pro-life, I would be against a federal restriction on abortion unless it were passed by ammending the Constitution, which is highly unlikely. The matter is most properly left to the States according to the Constitution, and always was until Roe v. Wade.
“But a vote of a majority of the people can become tyrannical through in effect revoking the legitimate rights of others.”
Granted. A representative government is only as good as its people. The founders talked a lot about this fact. If the people are thoroughly corrupt, then the nation will necessarily come to some tragic end in any case. The question is, which route is most apt to get the country into trouble? Settling these social issues at the state level through representative government, or having nine appointed justices issue fiat rulings on matters of which the Constitution says nothing? I think the latter is much more dangerous, and some of the founders (Jefferson comes to mind) were concerned about that, too.
“I support hate crimes laws because I believe that a hate crime constitutes a kind of domestic terrorism.”
The incremental punishment is not for the crime, it is for the thought.
So, you support certain laws meant to “tell other people what to do” (or what to think) without moral consensus when you deem it to be desirable, and you oppose certain laws meant to tell other people what to do on the basis that there is no moral consensus when you think the law is undesirable. As near as I can tell, your level of concern for moral consensus comes down to your judgment of what restriction is prudential and what restriction is not. In otherwords, it comes down to your political opinion about these matters.
“But it is not clear to me that a Christian is obligated to support a particular solution to the issue.”
Imagine that cannibalism was supported by 45-55% of a democratic society, and the only rule concerning it was that the victim must be a “consenting adult” of sound mind (perhaps the victim is terminally ill). This is an exaggeration, of course, but cannibalism was practiced as recently as the 20th century in some societies. Now, what should a Christian do? Should a Christian reason that, due to lack of moral consensus, he should refrain from advocating restriction of this right? Is it better to treat the matter solely as a “public health problem” that should be minimized by government action to improve the lives of potential victims? I do not see, by your reasoning, how it would be proper to ban cannibalism in this case, and abortion is just as morally serious from a Christian standpoint.
D. George writes: “The question is, which route is most apt to get the country into trouble? Settling these social issues at the state level through representative government, or having nine appointed justices issue fiat rulings on matters of which the Constitution says nothing?”
But as I noted before, the Constitution itself acknowledges that people have rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution. It seems to me that you’re taking the very position about which Madison was concerned — that any right not specifically mentioned in the Constitution is in the domain of the government, to grant or not grant as it sees fit. Again, I’m not a Constitutional scholar, but it seems to me that a major concern of the Constitution is in limiting the power of government to intervene in the rights of individuals — not in putting the government in a position to decide what rights they do or to not have.
D. George: “The incremental punishment is not for the crime, it is for the thought.”
I would say it is for the intention. But we have many laws in which the punishment is determined by the intention, not just by the mere act itself. If you kill someone your punishment can range anywhere from nothing (killing in justified self-defense) to the death penalty (premeditated murder). The intention is everything.
An even better example is found in the laws related to domestic terrorism:
Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113B, Section 2331
In other words, there are many laws — not just hate crime law — in which intention can be an aggravating factor — that the intention makes the crime more serious, requiring greater punishment.
Look at it this way: isn’t it potentially a worse crime for someone to spray paint a nazi swastika and “Death to Jews” on a synagoge, than it would be for the same person to spray paint his “gang tag” on the wall of a warehouse? Now maybe upon investigation we discover that the person who defaced the synagogue was just a stupid kid imitating something he saw in a movie. Or maybe we discover that that the person is a neo-nazi intending to intimidate the local Jewisih population. If the latter, then it is appropriate to mete out a punishment greater than that given to simple graffiti.
D. George: “As near as I can tell, your level of concern for moral consensus comes down to your judgment of what restriction is prudential and what restriction is not. In other words, it comes down to your political opinion about these matters.”
I don’t think so. Maybe I’m missing something, but it’s obvious to me that a crime committed with the intention of terrorizing potentially large numbers of people is worse than one without that intention. If not, then I guess we should repeal laws against domestic terrorism.
D. George: “Imagine that cannibalism was supported by 45-55% of a democratic society . . . Now, what should a Christian do? Should a Christian reason that, due to lack of moral consensus, he should refrain from advocating restriction of this right? Is it better to treat the matter solely as a “public health problem” that should be minimized by government action to improve the lives of potential victims? I do not see, by your reasoning, how it would be proper to ban cannibalism in this case, and abortion is just as morally serious from a Christian standpoint.”
Interesting example, but frankly, it is hard for me to see how the right to eat someone is a fundamental and private human liberty. Let’s use a more realistic example. We have laws against animal cruelty. You can’t torture dogs or set fire to kittens. So yes, we’re telling people what they can’t do. But again, that’s not something that is part of basic human liberty. In other words, there are different kinds of rights. To assert that you have some rights does not entail that you have a right to do everything you might feel like doing. The right of you and your wife to decide whether to use birth control without governmental intervention is extremely different from a supposed “right” to be cruel to animals, but I suppose someone can make a case for anything.
Only one way to find out. Find a willing person, kill and eat him, and at your trial claim that you were exercising one of the non-enumerated rights spoken of in the 9th Amendment. Let me know how that goes.
Jim: Here is the problem with Roe v. Wade.
Even if you accept the idea that privacy is an “implied” and protected right under the constitution, and most constitutional scholars do accept it, the constitution does not see rights as absolute, but rather balanced against “compelling state interests“. The right to freedom of speech, for example is balanced against the compelling state interest in preventing injury and mayhem by persons yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
In Roe v. Wade the woman’s right to privacy in deciding what medical procedures can and cannot be performed on her body, are balanced against the State’s compelling state interest in protecting maternal health and prenatal life.
In the third trimester, Justice Blackmun wrote the unborn child is so advanced in it’s development that the state’s interest in protecting prenatal life and maternal health outweighed the right to privacy, and abortion could be outlawed. In the second trimester, he wrote, the unborn child was advanced enough for the state to regulate, but not prohibit abortion. In the first trimester, Blackmun wrote, the unborn child was not viable outside the womb nor advanced enough in development to qualify as a legally protected person, so the woman’s right to privacy outweighed the state’s interest in protecting prenatal life, since the life it is attempting to protect may not be advanced enough to be fully human.
It’s Blackmun’s claim regarding the first trimester that is so controversial. He admits in his opinion that no one, not scientists, philolosophers, ethicists or theologians, can say with certainty “when life begins”. By that statement Blackmun revealed that his use of the first trimster as the marker for when an unborn child can be considered human and legally protected is arbitrary. He is just splitting the difference to arrive at what he sees as the most politically acceptable outcome. This arbitrary finding, that life begins 12-weeks, however is the whole linchpin of the decision, the central assumption around which Roe v. Wade’s application of the rule of law pivots.
The idea our humanity and legal rights as human beings is dependent upon our viability,outside the protective womb is an attack on the sanctity of human life. Using the viability standard, we could say people whose lives are dependent on their “protective” connection to respiration devices or dialysis machines, for example, are not human and legally protected either.
There is no popular consensus in the United States if favor of the view that viability should be the proper standard for determining our humanity and rights as legally protected person. Frankly, if there were such a consensus i would be alarmed.
The issues surrounding abortion are sometimes complex and confront us with strong and opposing considerations. There are many agonizing questions for which simple answers do not exist. Should a woman who has been violently raped be forced to give birth? What about unborn children with genetic markers for profound retardation or severe physical deformities? However, (IMHO) at least in the absence of these rare and agonizing complications, we should err in favor of a broad defintion of life rather than a more narrow one.
Note 79. Dean writes:
This is a accurate synopsis of the Roe problem, Dean. Further, you may not be aware that about ten years ago, Justice O’Conner opined that the entire notion of viability was flawed because it’s a fluid concept. The more medical tecnology advances, the closer the line of viability moves toward conception. (Roe is what happens when Justices think they are biologists.) BTW, Doe v. Bolton, which followed Roe, expanded abortion into the full nine months of pregnancy. That’s why it took a special law to stop partial birth abortions.
Actually it’s more than that. In cases of teenage abortion for example, some states require parental notification laws. In other states, challenges to Planned Parenthood have been lodged to see if there is any substance to claims PP has aborted in cases of obvious abuse and other crimes. Privacy, IOW, is not as encompassing as Jm likes to think.
note 80:
Who are you and what have you done with Pontius “Marx” Pilate???
Mr. Holman #79:
“But as I noted before, the Constitution itself acknowledges that people have rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution.”
Yes, and I believe it was acknowledging rights not restricted by state governments. The federal government should not restrict rights that exist in the states just because the Constitution does not enumerate those rights. I think this was Madison’s concern. In fact, those matters not addressed by the Constitution are left to the states, according to the Constitution. I seriously doubt Madison would have desired the ability to decide some “implied” right to privacy or to abortion that overrides all state laws.
“I would say it is for the intention.”
No, it is for the thought. Hate is not an intention. Premeditation shows intent, desire to instill terror in a population is an intent, but dislike of a certain demographic group (unjustified though it may be) is not an intent, it is just a thought. If you are correct, the laws are unnecessary because the crimes could be prosecuted as terroristic acts. In hate crimes legislation, it is the mere thought that results in the incremental punishment. But, I think we’ve debated hate crimes elsewhere some time ago. My point was only that the laws are designed to “tell others what to do” and are definitely not backed by moral consensus, yet you support them.
“Interesting example, but frankly, it is hard for me to see how the right to eat someone is a fundamental and private human liberty.”
Of course it is hard. It is very hard for me to see how aborting an unborn child is a fundamental and private human liberty. But my point is that you are not willing to apply the moral consensus argument consistently (both in this example, with hate crimes, and with other examples as it suits you), and because that is the case, I do not see why you think I should be bothered by the lack of consensus on abortion when advocating restriction of the practice.
Dean writes: “Even if you accept the idea that privacy is an “implied” and protected right under the constitution, and most constitutional scholars do accept it, the constitution does not see rights as absolute, but rather balanced against “compelling state interests“. The right to freedom of speech, for example is balanced against the compelling state interest in preventing injury and mayhem by persons yelling fire in a crowded theatre.”
I see where you’re going with that, but I would like to offer some important clarifications. First, for those who like a more traditional interpretation of the Constitution, the ‘compelling state interest’ test was not devised until 1963.
http://puffin.creighton.edu/human/csrs/news/S98-1.html
Thus rights are not “balanced against” anything, but rather compelling state interest is a burden of proof placed on the government. The purpose of the compelling state interest test was not to limit rights, but actually to expand rights through limiting government infringement of those rights. This is a development that occurred from the 1930s to the 1960s:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/colloquium/constitutionaltheory
/Siegel.pdf
The first movement toward great freedom of speech came with the development of “clear and present danger” jurisprudence,” followed shortly by “balancing of interests” thinking. But many felt that this afforded insufficient protection of speech. (ibid, p 24.) “Balancing of interests” historically was used to defend virtually every infringement of rights; for some reason the balance typically tended to come down on the side of the State. Finally in 1963 compelling state interest became the standard for deciding First Amendment issues.
But throughout this history, the various tests were designed to expand rights, not contract them. Compelling state interest is a burden of proof, not an assumption up front.
But even if we apply your “balancing” standard to the issue, in what sense, in your view, is the woman’s right to privacy “balanced” against the state’s compelling interest? In your view as I understand it, the State’s interest would govern and control the woman’s situation from the moment of conception through delivery. Whence then “privacy?” In your view there is none that I can detect. In this case you use the compelling state interest test not to limit State power but to expand it.
As you say, “it’s Blackmun’s claim regarding the first trimester that is so controversial. He admits in his opinion that no one, not scientists, philolosophers, ethicists or theologians, can say with certainty “when life begins”. By that statement Blackmun revealed that his use of the first trimster as the marker for when an unborn child can be considered human and legally protected is arbitrary.” I don’t really like the word “arbitrary,” but let’s go with it.
Remember, “compelling state interest” is a burden of proof that must be met by the State, not a “balancing,” not an assumption up front. If it is true that we cannot determine with certainty when life begins, how then does the State have a compelling interest in protecting all fertilized eggs and fetuses merely because we do not know the exact point at when life begins? The burden is not on the woman to show when life begins. The burden is on the State. The State cannot just arbitrarily assert that it begins at conception, thus obliterating the woman’s right to privacy at all stages of development.
Dean: “The idea our humanity and legal rights as human beings is dependent upon our viability,outside the protective womb is an attack on the sanctity of human life. Using the viability standard, we could say people whose lives are dependent on their “protective” connection to respiration devices or dialysis machines, for example, are not human and legally protected either.”
Well — they are outside the womb, aren’t they?
Dean: “However, (IMHO) at least in the absence of these rare and agonizing complications, we should err in favor of a broad defintion of life rather than a more narrow one.”
Back to the Constitutional issue. In “compelling state interest” the burden of proof is on the State. It is the State that must prove the facts, not the pregnant woman. The woman’s right to privacy cannot be eliminated by the State’s assertion that we should “err” in favor of a broad definition.
The burden is indeed upon the State. Fortunately, the doctrine dealing with the application of the Compelling State Interest test and set forth in a number of Supreme Court cases, was reviewed and summarized by Justice Brennan in Elrod v Burns 427 U.S. 347 (1976). I still remember this case because I had a particularly intimidating Jesuit Priest as my Constitutional Law professor.
Justice Brennan wrote:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=US&vol=427&page=347
So let’s apply these tests to a state law restricting or outlawing abortion.
Test 1: “The gain to the subordinating interest provided by the means must outweigh the incurred loss of protected rights.” Obviously the protection of an entire life outweighs the imposition of 9 months of pregnancy, however inconvenient.
Test 2: “the government must employ means closely drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgment” Only the abortion procedure itself would be restricted, not any other aspect of a woman’s personal life.
Test 3: “[A] State may not choose means that unnecessarily restrict constitutionally protected liberty… If the State has open to it a less drastic way of satisfying its legitimate interests, it may not choose a legislative scheme that broadly stifles the exercise of fundamental personal liberties.” Can you think of a less restrictive or stifling means of saving the prenatal life from termination other than halting the abortion procedure? I can’t.
The only way Roe v. Wade can succeed within these bounds is to deny that the unborn child during it’s first 12 weeks has attained the status of “prenatal life”, but to instead treat it as some form of non-human tissue. It is this contention that is so inflammatory and offensive to the Pro-Life movement and a majority of Christians.
So, paradoxically, my interpretation is that abortion can be constitutionally prohibited by the States, even though I don’t think it’s a very good policy idea. If all a State is doing is chasing women who want abortions to other States where it is legal, without addressing the underlying causes of why they have abortions, then it is falling far short of the objective reducing the number of abortions.
I would also submit that the highest service we can provide women is not to leave them alone in their privacy to experience repeated unwanted pregnancies and abortions, or else chase them into the back alley or accross state lines, but to assist them to reach a point where they can take control of their lives and not have unwanted pregnancies to begin with.
So, paradoxically, my interpretation is that abortion can be constitutionally prohibited by the States, even though I don’t think it’s a very good policy idea. If all a State is doing is chasing women who want abortions to other States where it is legal, without addressing the underlying causes of why they have abortions, then it is falling far short of the objective reducing the number of abortions.
Ah, there he is. Welcome back Pontius
I’m glad there’s no such thing as poverty in this country. Despite stories like this, I’m thrilled to know that everyone who is poor is poor by choice and that they can simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps without dipping into my wallet.
I feel so much less guilty today!! Thank you!!
I feel so much less guilty today!! Thank you!!
That’s what this site is all about, assuaging the immense guilt of the secular left (never mind the title)…your very welcome, now you can go put your head back into the bottomless sand pit of the liberal left…thanks for visiting and please, don’t come again, until your next bout of angst…:)
Note 87. James, I noticed most of the articles dealt with rents in San Francisco. Does San Francisco have rent control? If so, it may explain the lack of affordable rental units. Rent control kills the market for mid-priced housing, therefore rental units are converted to condos or coops to be sold. Usually its the lower middle and middle classes that get pushed out. Manhattan is the best example.
The article made the point that rental units won’t open up until foreclosures start. This doesn’t make any sense. Usually the rental market expands in an inflated market for the simple reason that speculators want their units filled to pay the mortgage. Subsidizing half a mortgage payment is a lot better than no subsidy at all.
More to the point though, poverty needs to be addressed with less emotion and a better understanding of markets as well as the familial and communal ties that make the move out of poverty successful. Think only emotionally, and you end up institutionalizing poverty — much like the Great Society did. Besides, no one stopping you from opening your wallet. Why not send the man some money to help him out?
Note 85. Dean writes:
“…to experience repeated unwanted pregnancies”? Are babies conceived by spontaneous generation?
Dean writes: “Test 1: “The gain to the subordinating interest provided by the means must outweigh the incurred loss of protected rights.” Obviously the protection of an entire life outweighs the imposition of 9 months of pregnancy, however inconvenient.”
The word “obviously” is the problem. For many people it’s not obvious that, for example, the rights of a fertilized egg should totally trump the privacy rights of the woman. In fact, since around half of all pregnancies naturally terminate even before the woman knows she is pregnant, the idea that the state has a compelling interest in “protecting” fertilized eggs is strange to me.
If the state has a legitimate interest in protecting life in all stages of development, then we need to flesh out exactly what this “inconvenience” could be.
Based on the logic of compelling state interest, I think the following are possible and perhaps likely eventual “inconveniences”:
1) the woman could not have a surgical or chemical abortion.
2) the woman could not use the “morning after” pill whether or not she’s pregnant, due to possible harm to the fertilized egg, if any.
3) the woman could not have an abortion in cases of rape or incest. (Rights of the fertilized egg always trump rights of the woman.)
4) the woman could be forced into extended bed rest in order to protect the pregnancy.
5) the woman could be forced to have a medical procedure (cervical suture) or forced to take medications in order to protect the pregnancy.
6) in order to accomplish items such as 4 and 5, there would have to be a
mandatory pregnancy reporting system. In addition, the State would have access to all medical records related to pregnancy.
7) State approval would be necessary in order to have an abortion to save the life of the mother. (And who does the “approving?”)
9) it would be illegal to distribute information on obtaining an out of state
abortion, or to aid in obtaining such an abortion.
10) the woman would be required to refrain from unhealthy activities during the pregnancy. (E.g., smoking, drinking)
11) in the case of fetal abnormality — assuming that such tests are permitted — the State would decide whether an abortion was permitted.
I think that’s about it. Whether all of these would be implemented, only time would tell. But the interesting thing is that an excellent argument for “compelling State interest” could be used to justify all of them.
In effect, you end up with an understanding of the Constitution that was exactly what Madison feared: the woman has no rights except those specifically enumerated, and all other possible rights pass into the hands of the State, which, in it’s glorious majesty, may grant or not as it sees fit. “Compelling state interest,” once used to limit State power, now becomes the tool of expanding State power.
This is exactly what we saw in the Schiavo case, where the religious right demanded that the State intervene, and privacy, the patient-doctor relationship, legal process, findings of fact, rules of evidence, separation of powers, and everything else be damned. The religious right loved the State, they embraced the State, they couldn’t get enough of the State. What you’re advocating is a system in which every pregnancy becomes Terri Schiavo — any pregnancy potentially falls into State custody if the State disagrees with the woman’s decision.
Dean writes: “Only the abortion procedure itself would be restricted, not any other aspect of a woman’s personal life.”
And how do you know that? Remember, it used to be illegal in some states even to distribute birth control information.
Dean: “The only way Roe v. Wade can succeed within these bounds is to deny that the unborn child during it’s first 12 weeks has attained the status of “prenatal life”, but to instead treat it as some form of non-human tissue. It is this contention that is so inflammatory and offensive to the Pro-Life movement and a majority of Christians.”
Just because something is inflammatory and offensive to many people doesn’t mean that the State has a compelling interest in prohibiting it. The vast majority of peole find speeches by nazis inflammatory and offensive. Should that speech be banned?
And so I get back to this question: in your system, what inherent rights does a pregnant woman have, over and above those granted to her by the State? As far as I can see, absolutely none.
For those who say that there is no right to an abortion in the Constitution, I would note that the Constitution also says nothing about fertilized eggs or fetuses being persons. In your system the State would simply stipulate that they are, and poof! — the rights of the pregnant woman disappear.
Fr. Hans asks: “Why not send the man some money to help him out?”
Well, what I’m trying to determine is whether doing so would violate some Christian ethic that states that
a) the man is not really poor and so deserves nothing because he is simply complaining and doesn’t know how good he’s really got it. Thus, sending him aid would only reinforce his pagan notions that material goods actually have worth
or
b) the man is poor because he has made bad decisions and is paying the fitting punishment for those choices, in which case aiding him would only enable his dependency on handouts
This seems to be Christopher’s view at least.
I’m not talking about “free rides” or allowing able-bodied persons to receive government handouts while neglecting to contribute. What I don’t get is why it’s so difficult to accept that there are, in fact, honest working people who have a real difficulty in providing not luxuries but basic necessities for themselves and their families.
Note 92. I’m not speaking for Christopher, and apart from this blog I don’t even know the man, but my hunch is that he has probably laid out a good amount of cash helping people along the way. And, being the Christian that he is, he won’t let the left hand know what the right is doing, so don’t expect him to respond to this.
Having said that, don’t conclude that all policies that ostensibly help the poor really help them. And don’t confuse criticism of a policy with criticism of the poor.
Do you know why Clinton ended “welfare as we know it”? Because welfare, as it was formulated in the Great Society programs and promulgated for decades, actually locked the poor in their poverty. It did so by destroying the family structure, rewarding non-productive activity and thus destroying the incentive to work, among other things.
When the criticism of the welfare system first started, you should have heard the outcry. You would have thought the Huns had invaded New York. Well, the truth won out and now the shift from liberal styled welfare to different systems is actually working.
One final point. Don’t assume that those who cry the loudest about poverty are actually the ones who help the poor. See: Charity’s Political Divide.
But again, why not contact the newspaper and send the man a few bucks? It will help in the short run.
Note 91. Jim, your scenarios are ludicrous. Why prohibit jaywalking? Before you know it, the government is going to jail us for not walking on the right side of the sidewalk! Why prohibit public nudity? Before you know it, the government will make us wear Abercrombe & Fitch! Why probit drunken driving? Before you know it, the government will force us to drink three glasses of milk a day! They might even mandate oatmeal!
When you extract the moral dimension from any discussion of the public welfare, you end up chasing rabbits. Moral sensibility serves as a guardrail not only in the public culture, but in our own thinking as well. It informs qualities like prudence and common sense; qualities that help us discern the reasonable from the unreasonable and specious arguments from real ones.
Fr. Hans writes: “Jim, your scenarios are ludicrous.”
If only they were. Look, once you say that the government has a compelling interest in protecting fetal life — when you say that the fertilized egg or fetus has a right to life — that terminating such life is literally murder — then virtually any State action in protecting such life will be seen as a compelling State interest.
If indeed the government has a compelling interest in protecting the life of the unborn — an actual person in the womb — you’re going to tell me that you’ll going to let a woman take a two hour bus ride to an adjacent state with the express purpose of terminating that life — of, in your view, committing murder. You’re going to tell me that the government has no interest in that???? The government just says “oh well, it didn’t happen here, so we don’t care?” Would you let a woman take a child across state lines with the intention of murdering the child?
If the fetus is literally a person in the womb, then what can’t the government do in protecting that person? What specifically would be the limits of the power of the government?
Fr. Hans: “Why prohibit jaywalking? Before you know it, the government is going to jail us for not walking on the right side of the sidewalk!”
Oh come on. The anti-abortion crowd believes that everything in the womb, from fertilized eggs to fetuses, are real, live people, and that terminating those pregnancies constitutes murder. You’re comparing jaywalking with murder. Nice try. Please tell me that you don’t consider jaywalking and murder equal crimes.
Fr. Hans: “Moral sensibility serves as a guardrail not only in the public culture, but in our own thinking as well. It informs qualities like prudence and common sense; qualities that help us discern the reasonable from the unreasonable and specious arguments from real ones.”
In protecting innocent children from being murdered, what is the “guardrail?” What inherent rights do you think a pregnant woman has?
1) the right to use the “morning after” pill when it is not clear whether she is pregnant or not?
2) the right of the woman to terminate the pregnancy in the case of rape?
3) the right of the woman to refuse bed rest, even if it led to the death of the fetus?
4) the right of the woman to refuse surgical or medical treatment, even it if led to the death of the fetus?
5) the right of the woman to have her medical records completely confidential from State inquiry?
6) the right of the woman to have a physician, not the State, decide whether abortion was necessary to preserve the health or life of the mother?
7) the right of the pregnant woman to travel out of state to have an abortion?
9) the right of the woman to have a test for fetal abnormality, and in the case of fetal abnormality to decide whether to continue the pregnancy?
Since these are all “ludicrous” examples, a simple yes or no answer will suffice.
Note 95. Jim writes:
Leave it to the legislatures, Jim. That is how American government works. Don’t leave common sense behind the building.
You know, you can’t get yourself to grant the unborn any real value, you raise all sorts of ludicrous scenarios if abortion is regulated, yet you are the first to defend government prosecution for thought crimes. Go figure.
Here’s a more reasonable view towards abortion regulation: The Dutch on Abortion.
Fr. Hans writes: “Leave it to the legislatures, Jim. That is how American government works. Don’t leave common sense behind the building.”
And so we come back to the quotation from Madison:
It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure.
Basically, Madison was right. You want to put the issue into the hands of the General Government. Thus, the woman has no inherent rights; rather she has only those rights granted by the grace of the government.
Fr. Hans: ” . . . you raise all sorts of ludicrous scenarios if abortion is regulated . . .”
But when I ask for specific answers about those “ludicrous scenarios,” you give no answer. Your silence speaks volumes.
Fr. Hans: ” . . . et you are the first to defend government prosecution for thought crimes. Go figure.”
What I said was that, given the existence of groups that function as quasi-terrorist groups, hates crimes laws are a good idea. I also said that in the event that hate crimes laws were repealed, I wouldn’t lose sleep. I also said that were hate crimes laws abused, I would be in favor of reform. So please don’t read more into my position than what is there.
Again the question: how do you respond to the scenarios in post #95. Yes or no? Those should be easy questions.
Note 97. Jim writes:
You got my answer: ludicrous.
You sound like an aging feminist warrior — the only ones still screaming for abortion on demand. Nothing like a good partial birth abortion or two to get the blood running in the morning.
Look, the consensus has shifted. The politics of pitting mother against her unborn child doesn’t work anymore. More people recognize that aborting the next generation is not a public good. The unborn child does indeed have some value, pro-choice polemics notwithstanding. Even people in your own party recognize these very basic moral facts.
Fr. Hans writes: “You got my answer: ludicrous.”
Let’s see how ludicrous. In 2006 Ohio H.B. 228, with 18 co-sponsors in the Ohio House of Representatives, had the following features:
1) total ban on all abortion, the only exception being to save the life of the mother.
2) no exception for the health of the mother or fetal abnormality
3) no exception in the case of rape or incest
4) illegal to transport a woman to another state to get an abortion
Here’s the actual text of the bill, published on a pro-life web site:
http://www.ohioabortionban.com/mothersexemted
Anyone who performs an abortion or transports a woman to another state to have an abortion would also be liable for civil damages:
Here’s the only exemption:
The Ohio bill did not become law. But it was proposed, had 18 co-sponsors, and was supported by pro-life groups. By my count it violates, in full or in part, 6 of the 9 rights that I listed in my previous post.
In addition South Dakota HB 1215 would have banned abortion without any exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, or fetal abnormality.
I know you like to point to Canada as an example of the slippery slope of hate crimes law. So let’s look at another English-speaking country as an example of the slippery slope of abortion law.
Until 1992 it was illegal in Ireland for a pregnant woman to travel to another country to receive an abortion, and it was illegal even to distribute information on abortion services in other countries. In the early 90s a 14 year old girl who was raped was physically prevented by the government from leaving Ireland in order to obtain an abortion in England. [Another one of those "ludicrous" things that end up happening anyway.] This was eventually overturned by their Supreme Court. Finally in 1992 a referendum was passed that gave Irish women the right to leave the country to obtain an abortion, and to receive information on that.
So by my count, we’re now up to violations of 7 of the 9 rights I listed previously — violations that existed either in actual laws or or proposed laws.
At this point, care to revise your statement about how “ludicrous” those are?
The reason they aren’t ludicrous is because, once you say that the fetus is essentially a child who needs to be protected, at what point do you say that the state no longer has a compelling interest in providing that protection? As the proposed Ohio legislation shows, there isn’t one. Health of the mother? Rape? Incest? Fetal abnormality? Permitting assistance with out of state travel? Forget about it. True, the Ohio legislation didn’t become law. But in proposing and supporting the law, the religious right has tipped it’s hand. When Roe v. Wade is overturned at the end of Act One, we know how the play continues in Act Two. The only ludicrous thing is to think that won’t happen.
Note 99. Welcome to America Jim, where the regulation of abortion will be contentious, and certainly not to your liking in some cases. Some states will be liberal, some conservative. But this contentiousness (which always surrounds issues where the value of human beings are challenged — remember slavery?) is no reason to continue with the wholesale abortion on demand that you tout as a “human right”.
You are correct that some of the ideas to regulate abortion are not reasonable. But reasonableness is not your aim. Rather you want to see abortion on demand remain the law of the land and such travesties as partial birth abortion continued. That’s why the argument is ludicrous, Jim.
If you extract the question of whether or not the unborn child has any inherent value from any discussion of the effects of abortion on the public culture, you a just a few short steps away from the proponents of infanticide like Peter Singer. Singer is a moral barbarian, but at least he has dropped the pretense that the unborn are not really human beings.
Fr. Hans writes: “Welcome to America Jim, where the regulation of abortion will be contentious, and certainly not to your liking in some cases.”
Remember the “equal rights amendment” of the 1970s? One of the main arguments against it was that no one could say with any certainty what it meant or how it might be interpreted, an argument I thought had some merit. What you’re suggesting with the overturning of Roe v. Wade is a similar kind of uncertainty. After Roe is gone, what happens is anyone’s guess. The most you can say is some state wills be liberal, some conservative. What does that mean? No one knows.
Fr. Hans: “You are correct that some of the ideas to regulate abortion are not reasonable. But reasonableness is not your aim. Rather you want to see abortion on demand remain the law of the land and such travesties as partial birth abortion continued. That’s why the argument is ludicrous, Jim.”
What constitutes a “reasonable” position? Dean mentioned “balancing” the rights of the pregnant woman with compelling state interest. What is that balance? With what concessions would the religious right be satisfied? As far as I can tell, the ultimate goal of the religious right is virtually the total elimination of abortion, and there simply isn’t anything short of that that would satisfy. So it’s not clear to me what would count as reasonable opposition to that. I’ve never heard anyone on the religious right specify what inherent rights the pregnant woman has. After 30 years of silence on that issue, one begins to suspect that in the view of the religious right, she doesn’t have any.
Fr. Hans: “If you extract the question of whether or not the unborn child has any inherent value from any discussion of the effects of abortion on the public culture, you a just a few short steps away from the proponents of infanticide like Peter Singer.”
Under Roe abortion is already regulated in two out of three trimesters. This is in addition to other restrictions that states have been able to implement. And all that is in addition to other success that the religious right has had in driving various abortion providers out of business. Mississippi now has only one abortion clinic left.
But I’m willing to live with all that. Yet you say my position is unreasonable. So I ask again, at what point would my position be reasonable? What more would it take?
I would only like to add that I am sure that another 20 posts by Jim in favor killing unborn human beings will not only be a witness to him, but any other lurkers as well. Dean, could you chime in – We don’t get enough holocaust witness around here.
Since this thread is supposed to be about “the poor”, maybe we can lament how poor people have to scrape up a few bucks to give to “the man” when killing their children……:(
Note 101. Jim writes:
Not quite right. The ERA was a proposed constitutional amendment. The issue was that because of its vagueness, interpretation would fall to the courts. It would be a mess.
Roe v. Wade on the other hard, was the overturning of state laws by judical fiat. It does not in any sense have the authority of a constitutional amendment. In fact, what Roe v. Wade really means is still up in the air. It will never be “overturned” as such since the Justices are loath to overturn a previous Court’s decision. It can, however, be defined out of practical existence which it should be because it is perhaps one of the most sloppily reasoned decisions ever to come out of the Court.
Again, not quite right. Roe was redefined under Doe v. Bolton, which opened up abortion to a split second before the fetus emerged from the womb. How else do you think partial birth abortions were ever allowed?
Questions like this will be decided state by state. What you may see is a diminution of this notion that “rights” language is even appropriate in cases of abortion. It’s largely a polemical consruct promulgated by the pro-arbortion lobby years ago. Yes, I know the Rawellian logic, etc etc. But pitting mother against child is just not morally compelling. That one reason why it never really flies except with those who are already pro-abortion to begin with.
#96
Re “The Dutch on Abortion”
Most Europeans have no idea how unrestricted abortion is in the US. When you explain to them what is allowed they usually recoil and say “that is barbaric” or something to that effect. In a similar vein, Pete Singer, the post-natal abortion enthusiast is denied entry into Germany, where remembrance of such attitudes is somewhat more vivid than in the US. Germany also prohibits all stem-cell research. Right and left political dogma doesn’t always translate across the Atlantic.
I went and heard a business analyst speak at a luncheon meeting today. In ten years, the labor force will be short 10 million workers he said. “Do you know why that is,” he asked? “It’s because the Boomers are retiring. Right now one Boomer retires every eight seconds.”
Well, yes and no. Sure, as Boomers retire more labor is needed to take their place. But is this the only reason there will be a shortage? Another reason is that we have aborted 40 million of the next generation.