(no subject)

[adderslj]

When did western culture become so moronic? Why has debate reached the point where the only option seems to be "pick a side and defend its values until the death"?

Take abortion. Abortion is one of the terrible, hard decisions we as a society have to face regularly.

The facts are these: there will always be unwanted pregnancies and women will always seek to end them in some fashion. However, doing so ends the existence of something that will, without intervention, become a human being.

This is actually simple to grasp, yet the debate is dominated by two groups, one of which is unwilling to deal with the reality of backstreet abortions and the human cost of unwanted children, while the other is unwilling to countenance for a second that an abortion might be taking the life of a human being (or that there might be serious emotional consequences for the mother further down the line).

So there we have it, one of the most serious ethical dilemmas our society has to face, and it's reduced to a shouting match between two groups of morons. There are people who are pro-life and people who are pro-choice, but precious few who are pro-thought.

Really, I hope there are better sentient species than us out there somewhere, because we're not using this gift of intelligence terribly well right now.

Comments

[fraserspeirs.livejournal.com]

Like evolution, abortion is one of these topics I no longer get involved in discussions about. I know what I think about both, but there's rarely a pleasant outcome to any conversation which touches on either....

Come to think of it, there's also Operating Systems, text editors, email clients........

[adders.livejournal.com]

Indeed. One of the key reasons that such discussions are, usually, fruitless, is that often the person you're debating with seeks to categorise you into a "pro" or "anti" camp, and once they've done so, stops listening to what you're actually saying.

Ugh. Are you in my tribe? Ugh. No. I must smash you. Ugh.

[fraserspeirs.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, football as well. And, er, any topic on a 5 Live phone-in....

[slog.livejournal.com]

often the person you're debating with seeks to categorise you into a "pro" or "anti" camp

yup, that's my biggest issue as well. This is not a cut-and-dry issue for anyone unless you ARE in the pro and anti camps. I wish people would realize that life is not black and white.

ugh.

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

Made all the more complex by the fact that 90% of the people shouting have had no direct experience with unwanted pregnancy.

[adders.livejournal.com]

All too true.

[sailormur.livejournal.com]

That is a very very true statement.

Adam, what brought on this rant, if I may ask?

[adders.livejournal.com]

A women's magazine over here interviewed the three main political party leaders and asked a question about abortion. Blair said that he didn't like abortion, but accepted that it was neccessary and that the debate over the topic should always be open. Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that he didn't yet know what his party should do in light of some recent pictures of foteuses in the womb and supporting medical evidence that perhaps 22 weeks as a cut off was too late. And Michael Howard said he was personally in favour of a 20 week cut-off, but would allow a free vote on the subject if his party got into power (that is, the Government would table a motion, but wouldn't "whip" its own MPs into voting on a party line, leaving them free to follow their own hearts and heads on the issue).

I liked that. I thought all three leaders gave thoughtful and honest responses.

And I then come across an orgy of thoughless pro-life, anti-Tory drivel in some posts on my friends page, using this difficult and painful issue for stupid party political mutual masturbation, if you'll excuse the phrase.

And it upset me.

[adders.livejournal.com]

I actually meant "pro-choice" in the above, but it makes little difference - my feelings would have been the same either way around.

[sailormur.livejournal.com]

Wow, how enlightened of your leaders. That's pretty cool.

I sometimes think that people's reactions to things are like setting a price for your house. You know if you want to gain X, you have to ASK for X+1. So in order for them to gain whatever minor political ground that they want, they have to act like unreasonable zealots.

[adders.livejournal.com]

We have a more nurturing environment for thoughtful debate on the subject over here, because our leaders don't have a large pseudo-religious social demographic to appease. Blair, for example, is a Christian, but he could never make a big thing of it in the way Bush does, for the fear of electoral damage.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Having watched the various Channel 4 programmes on Sunday about the "top 20 most banned complaints about programs that haven't yet aired Ever!" (something like that, anyhow) and then reading your post, the thought that strikes me is that what you're missing is the silent majority.

Yes - almost any situation can be polarised. For each pole, there will be loud displays of preening and caterwauling with little to no intellectual content.

But people in general respond in bell-curves; the screaming pro-lifers who threaten the lives of doctors and nurses are not representative of society of large; they're not even representative of the Pro-Life movement.

(My dad was involved with Life for a very long time - including helping to run a shelter for teenagers who'd been thrown out of home because they wanted to keep their child rather than having it aborted. He detested the fundamentalist Pro-Lifers because they didn't help at all when he was trying to explain that abortion wasn't the only option.)

The same is just as true of the Pro-Choice people. The ones you see most of are the ones who are most visible.

In the same way that it doesn't take much organisation to get a record into the charts, it doesn't take much to get a 'spokesperson' onto the news for whatever issue is currently in the headlines. And, lets be honest, there will always be some channel of the media that will court controversy by allowing a nut-job (of any / all persuasions) access to a camera.

[adders.livejournal.com]

You're almost certainly right, but it depresses me that the silent majority are, well, silent. When the reasonable, thoughtful people leave the debate to the noisy morons, it cheapens society.

And in this case, the triggering factor wasn't mainstream media, but discussion on the internet, by people who I'd normally consider to be thoughtful. Yes, I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but just once in a while it does really upset me.

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

Amen! It's funny that you should bring this up. Blue and I were just talking about this yesterday.

The abortion debate frustrates me so much, because the people who seem most vocal in their opposition to abortions also oppose just about any common-sense measure to reduce their number. The ideas that we might, as a society, provide education about human sexuality and birth control, good pre- and ante-natal care, quality support programs, parenting preparation classes and the like are not seen as positives by most of the pro-life movement, at least not here in the United States. Yet, that's what a

On the other side, the mere suggestion that perhaps the parents of a 14-year-old might be notified of her and her adult boyfriend's decision to abort or any acknowledgement that there might be some moral or ethical consequence to a woman's choice are greeted with howls of indignation.

It's entirely nonsensical from my point of view, as well.

[adders.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Arguing from a Christian perspective, I've never understood those Christians who throw all their efforts into getting legislation overturned rather than working within society to make the legislation a moot point.

We leave far too much to government, sometimes.

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

Getting laws passed it easy. All you have to do is whine persistently.

Teaching people is hard. Teaching teenagers about sex is especially hard, because it requires getting it through their thick heads that sex has reprecussions. All of the facts in the world won't get through to one teen who hasn't grokked that shit happens, possibly to him.

[adders.livejournal.com]

True - but education isn't the only thing that people can do. Making sure that there's a caring support structure around people, especially teenagers who make stupid mistakes, goes a long way towards making a difference.

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

True. That's hard, too, though. Let's say your teen gets pregnant. As a parent, you've got to put aside all of your anger, humiliation and frustration and actually help her cope with what's happening. Very, very few people are capable of doing that, especially in a culture of entitlement like the one we currently enjoy.

[adders.livejournal.com]

Indeed, but (given that this specific thread of comments was talking from a Christian perspective) the call to love one another is hard, very hard, which is why too many so-called Christians prefer just to bash other people with misunderstood Biblical literalism rather than actually enage with the deeply challenging teachings of Christ. Just because it's hard to do something, doesn't mean people who genuinely believe in a faith shouldn't do it.

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

No, education won't solve the problem, which is why I listed a number of other ideas along with it. But then I don't think anything will end all abortion. There is, however, no doubt that education can have an impact. In many countries with widespread sex education and legal abortion, the abortion rate is lower than it is here. All the facts in the world mightn't get through to your one teen who has no sense of consequence, but there are a lot of teens who do get the point. I think we're inclined to underestimate teen-agers on these sorts of issues.

Nor are unwanted pregancies by any means limited to teen-agers. There are a lot of adults well out of their teen-age years who could use better information about birth control and human sexuality.

[adders.livejournal.com]

People's lack of understanding of human fertility issues of all types is quite staggering sometimes. My wife was horrified to hear a couple of women in their mid-30s discussing when to have children on a train. One said she wasn't ready for kids just yet, so her and her husband had decided to leave it another five or ten years and go straight into IVF.

She clearly had no knowledge of the likely success rate of IVF (not high), the issues on child health around the age of the mother (the younger you are, the better, basically) and probably not even the financial costs involved.

One might argue that this was just proving that sometimes deep stupidity will breed itself out of the gene pool, but even so....

[jfs.livejournal.com]

a couple of women in their mid-30s discussing when to have children on a train

Between stations, obviously.

[adders.livejournal.com]

I dunno, if you've got a bad local hospital, making sure you went into labour at a station near a good hospital might not be such a bad idea.... :)

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Well ... you're not allowed flush the loo at a station; I hardly think they'd allow much else.

Your chance of getting boiling water from a BR Buffet is probably not too hot, either.

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

It does amaze me the number of people who figure these stories about 50-year-old moms mean that women's fertility is now without limits. As a 35-year-old now in the eighth month of pregnancy, though, I have to be amused at how surprised that woman will be about the toll of pregnancy will be on her at 40 or 45 if she's lucky enough to achieve it.

difficult issues...

[jltraut.livejournal.com]

On every political blog I follow, abortion is THE hot-button topic -- even among liberals. And the sad thing is that, looking at all possible cases and circumstances, there are no easy, obviously-right moral answers, and the extremists on both sides don't want to accept that, lest they lose whatever legal or moral high ground they think they have to the extremists on the other side.

In the US, as other folks have said, this is particularly hot-button because the same people who oppose all abortions, under any circumstances, are also the ones that think abstinence-only is the only way sex ed should be taught to teenagers (also forbidding any discussion of condoms or other birth control methods except to say how they don't work). It tends to feel like they would rather punish the girl for having sex than prevent either unwanted pregnancies, abortions or STDs. And of course, we don't have any kind of national health care, so there's a high chance a woman has no health insurance to support her either before or after the birth.

It's also a fact that the nations that have the highest abortion rates are those where it is illegal, and the ones with the lowest are those where both birth control and abortion are readily available. So it would follow that to really reduce the number of abortions overall, having reliable and easily accessible birth control would go a long way.... but that would be admitting that people have sex, including people who are not married, poor, already have children, or are under the age of 18.

As you said, the discussion is so rooted in emotional issues that it's bypassing rationality most of the time.