14 thoughts on “Megan McArdle vs. Bad Pro-Abortion Statisics”

  1. Jim, the choice comes in when you are deciding to keep your knees together, not whether or not to kill a child.

  2. Mad,
    I won’t even try to debate this with you. Your beliefs and religious views are what they are. I and many people don’t share them.
    Crank,
    Ultimately her point is that there are so many better and more sound points as the why legalized abortion is a positive thing that using specious and/or incomplete info takes away from the better arguments. If this is what you want to use to defend your viewpoint it seems sort of silly. I would say that both of the most strident sides of this issue put out information that can be look at quite cockeyed. If you think all the baloney that comes from anti-choicers is dead on you are completely wrong.

  3. Jim, for me it isn’t about religion. What it is about is killing a child. With the availability of birth control today it is pure and simple laziness. There are valid reasons to have an abortion, but … just because isn’t one of them. Please don’t insult all of the children that have been aborted for no reason by suggesting otherwise.

  4. I make no offense to anything or anyone. Your views are your views. Perhaps they don’t come from a religious background, usually they do. You want to frame the debate as killing a child. I don’t share your point of view and many others don’t as well.
    You support an Admin that seeks to restrict information about and access to birth control. I also don’t think “just because” is the leading reason for an abortion. Perhaps in a perfect world where every single person conducted their sexual activities in a purely safe manner and birth control was 100% effective we could go with the no abortion thing. That world is not this world, nor will it ever be. Reality.

  5. Speaking as a person who works within the hard sciences and has crunched as well as interpreted statistics, a huge problem with the linked article is that the methodology of the study is not shown, therefore, the conclusions lack support. This is not to say that they are inherently wrong, but without showing how the counting was done, I have no idea if any of the results make any sense at all.
    I don’t think that abortion will be a settled issue until there is widespread agreement within our society that it is either morally offensive, or it is no different than having a mole removed. Laws won’t make any difference because unfortunately the buyer and the seller of the service are in agreement. The third person which many prefer to think of at not a person at all, has no say and is defenseless.
    There was a time when I thought abortion was no big deal. As time went on I found myself unable to maintain an intellectual defense for this point of view. To reduce this question to whether or not legality leads to safer medical procedures is ducking much larger issues such as: is early termination linked with breast cancer; what sort of psychological torment do some women experience after the abortion is performed; why is life that is defenseless so easy to dispose of, when in contrast it can take over 25 years to execute an obvious guilty murderer.
    Personally, I am worried about our society’s priorities. Ms. McArdle seems like an intelligent person, and perhaps over time she will think more deeply of the moral implications of her value system.

  6. Pro-lifers don’t need garbage science (even though science has clearly shown that all the genetic material you currently have and need for survival is present at conception) because they have truth.
    You could argue that a baby is a box of crayons up until and including the day of birth and it wouldn’t matter because the truth is, if that box of crayons is not interfered with (by chemicals or scissors to the back of the skull) it will come out of the womb naturally as a living child or stillborn (which would produce the result you desire). It is fruitless to type out arguments that will be rejected without consideration, so I will not bother.
    You say you respect views and offend no one. Please take no offense that my view (which is based on an ancient and consistent document) is that at the day of judgment, we will all know truth and the true value of created human life.

  7. Well said Sherwood. It is like a sign that one of my neighbors put up by the road. “It is a life, not a choice”. Amazingly the sign has been there for about 3 years and suffered no vandalism.

  8. Sherwood,
    You obviously want to make this some personal thing. I don’t. You obviously have religious views that I do not share. If you want to claim the moral highground due to this it really does not bother me. We differ in our opinions. Yours is not going to change and neither is mine. I rarely venture into this topic because it tends to get personal, nasty or both.
    I have a friend who has a bumper sticker that says, “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one.” I too am amazed that they don’t have to replace their windows every so often.

  9. Sherwood, that consistent document you refer to also talks of stoning adulterers to death, not to mention about keeping slaves. The document I prefer is the one Mr. Madison drew up. As I’ve said before, I am pro choice, but since the Constitution doesn’t mention it as a power reserved to the Federal Government, it’s left to the states to decide, in my opinion. I live in NY, and I agree with Mike, it would no doubt be legal here. And I would support that.

  10. Daryl, you just opened a whole new can of worms. To be technical, it allows slavery (even as a form of punishment for the nation of Israel’s disobedience) but does not allow inhuman treatment of slaves. Slavery alone is hardly different from factory conditions for Irish immigrants during the industrial revolution. Slavery by any other name is still hard work with few or no benefits. I do not advocate slavery of course, but it is not inconsistent with a holy and just God to allow it as a form of labor.
    As for the adultery, I personally would vote to criminalize it. Stoning was the method of that day and methods have changed, but it is still a crime against a righteous God who has sanctified marriage as He makes the two become one flesh. The root of all problems and pain in the world have one source, mankind’s rebellion against God through the violation of His character which is verbalized in His eternal Word. To deny His law is to deny His character and reject His sovereignty, which comes with a whole bag of consequences that I believe most people would want to avoid.

Comments are closed.