Heating up General. (Abortion)

[Yugo]

I know none of it was something that required life-long care, I was merely trying to make a point. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

[Prof B Hunnydew]

I hate to give just one example, and this a extreme case.  A few year back I ran into a story of a poor woman who had her baby, who the doctors said should have been adopted.. But she had the child anyway, and the child was born missing pretty much all of it upper lobe of her brain.  The woman was on welfare, but continue to rush to the hospital whenever the child's heart stop and it stopped breathing due many of her problems.  The child could just eat and sleep, and not much least, her eyes would not follow any toy, it would only cry when in pain, and it bare move its arms and legs.  Still the mother would demand care everytime the child near death, and this child would need life long care even if it did survive to adulthood.

The question is and it's a loaded one, When does the doctor or the state step in and not provide care to the terminal ill so they can died and let the suffering to stop?  (as well as save the taxpayer money)  And/or When or If the state should step-in make require abortions to these few extreme cases?

Another question beyond the US and the West is abortions for gender reasons.... India and China the top nations for this.

  China has been said to have done manatory abortions and only one child per couple  in a male dominated culture for years... Now, they have a problem of Too few girls in a overpopulated male society...What is going to happen to them?  They are going to have to call back all those infant girls that went to the West.  Going wife shopping in other countries?  or Go to War, and hope/insure that their excess of males gets killed off and/or kiddnap woman from their neighbors as sex-slaves.

PBH

[Gabi]

Your first few paragraphs were about euthanasia, not abortion.

As for China, that law is aimed to stop overpopulation, not to make one gender dominant.

Hmm... they could legalize polygamy and let women have more than one husband.

[superluser]

The question is and it's a loaded one, When does the doctor or the state step in and not provide care to the terminal ill so they can died and let the suffering to stop?  (as well as save the taxpayer money)  And/or When or If the state should step-in make require abortions to these few extreme cases?

Never?

Seriously, if the kid can't make decisions about his own life, the decisions should be made by a caregiver looking out for the kid's best interests.  It's one of the things that I took away from the Terri Schiavo debate.  I do not want the government telling me when I should be forced to stay on a feeding tube, but by the same token, I do not want the government to tell me when I must be taken off of that same tube.

Hmm... they could legalize polygamy and let women have more than one husband.

Maybe my understanding of human reproduction isn't as good as I thought it was.  I thought that women could only have one pregnancy at a time. 

P.S. I'll be looking into those stats for Amber this weekend.

[Gabi]

Only one at a time, yes (unless you count twins, triplets and so on). But she could have one from each man in her lifetime, and no man would be single in the meantime.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Seriously, if the kid can't make decisions about his own life, the decisions should be made by a caregiver looking out for the kid's best interests.  It's one of the things that I took away from the Terri Schiavo debate.  I do not want the government telling me when I should be forced to stay on a feeding tube, but by the same token, I do not want the government to tell me when I must be taken off of that same tube.

Are you expecting them to pay for said tube, completely, with no say in how the money is spent?

How many people should the govt be paying entirely for? If for this, then why can't the govt give me the same sum every year for doing nothing?

Why do the two cases differ? (and yes, I'll accept that I'm a different case) Why is it ok to expect the government to pay for you to get medical treatment at, oh, let's say two hundred thousand dollars a year, but it's not ok for the government to give me the same amount of money? It's going to get more back out of me than it's ever going to get back out of you...

Ah. This is assuming you're in a comatose state, with zero chance of ever getting out of it and back into a productive situation, tax-wise.... I'll admit I'm being confrontational, but there -is- a valid point here at base - at what point do we get to say what's right, and what's not? Assuming people are sane and thoughtful all the time is nice, but back here in the real world, people are going to do damn stupid things like keeping a child with half a brain missing alive, because the parent DOESN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. "The first aid is free, isn't it?" doesn't even start to cover the short-sightedness of the approach...

[Brunhidden]

china may have intended the one child per couple law to stop overpopulation, but that is not working. for several reasons.

first- most of the country is almost impossible to govern, anyone too far from a major city is largely untouched by these laws and routinely have 5-12 kids anyways.

second- large chunks of the country arent even aware they are in china, do not speak mandarin, and have not seen a government employee for decades

third- even if the law does not say a thing about it, the CULTURE says that girls are inferior to boys. especially in the poorer classes where parents fear having to pay a dowry when she gets married, and also commonly adhere to the traditional concepts of men bringing honor to the family.

on the up side many doctors in china and India are now refusing to tell parents the gender of their future child, knowing that many of the unborn girls will be given a death sentence.

the gruesome thing about the law about how many kids you can have is how impersonal it is. had your kid but you got pregnant again? abortion, but we knew that. how about the 'you are pregnant at the wrong time, you were scheduled to have the child at said time', well, even though your only five months pregnant they're going to induce labor and let the ultra-preemie struggle to survive for a few hours.

this may seem a bit grim to those of us more in western culture, but to china it works because for generations the people have been told the country is more important then any one person and they should be glad to give their lives to make things run more smoothly.

Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.

[Prof B Hunnydew]

...Even if the law does not say a thing about it, the CULTURE says that girls are inferior to boys. especially in the poorer classes where parents fear having to pay a dowry when she gets married, and also commonly adhere to the traditional concepts of men bringing honor to the family.

Actually, the dowry part is bigger in India, which young women are getting murder or thrown out into the street by her husband because her "dowry was not bigger enough" and/or the husband can get a bigger dowry from someone else's daughter, if he isn't married.   The Husband can go to his In-laws and demand more money, or their daughter will be killed. or he can just throw her out on "adulty" and get another wife with another dowry.

In China, a son, who is expected to support his parents in old age is the main reason of wanting a son over a daughter, and the law made no reference to gender just at you are allow only one kid.  So, individual family decided a son would be best, if only one is allow by the state. And they abortion any daughter unluck to come first.   If they really want to decrease the population, they should have just said your first born only.  If it is a boy or girl, that is it.  And if your child died, sorry for your bad luck.

I don't know, euthanasia is to me speeding up the procession of death, I am more for just letting nature take it's course.  Hold back aid which will just prelong the suffering in hopeless cases, as oppose to giving drugs or aid to speed death along.  To Clear-up my last post, My first question should be... Where should be a line on those "to save" and "not to sure" ?  But that is offtopic.

PBH

[Brunhidden]

sadly 'letting nature take its course' DOES happen to large populations of humans, but takes the form of large wars and plagues instead of natural predators.

for example the black death, yellow fever, smallpox, and the like which wiped out whole villages, or today with malaria pruning third world populations to this very day.

wars are less common now, sinse people dislike the idea of being shot at and our 'leaders' occasionally give an effort to prevent them. in history a great example is the 30 years war, which is responsible for a great many things. in the 30 years war what is now known as Germany was roughly 219 different small principalities, kingdoms, duchys, and other small states, but this region was used as a battle ground and IN GERMANS ALONE and ignoring the other countries involved one out of every three people (of all ages and genders, not just men of fighting age) were put to the sword and had to fend off starvation as their crops were burned. so, as a response to the wars the 200 some different countries ganged up to become what we now know of as Germany, and potato pancakes and potato salad became staple foods sinse its extremely hard to trample or torch a field of potatoes when you can do it to wheat almost by accident.

somehow i doubt our population issues are going to be solved this way unless
1- China and India invade pretty much everyone but Lichtenstein, casualties abound
2- China's current pollution problems continue as it is, drinking water that you do not need a spoon to drink and does not dissolve wooden container becomes scarce and people die that way.
3- Max Brooks was right and China creates a zombie virus, only a small percentage of humanity survives and has the benefit of 'starting over' with the current level of technology and does not need to go through several very dirty industrial revolutions
4- beings from another planet decide humans are tasty and suddenly the population of earth is used to fuel an intergalactic version of McDonalds

I honestly don't have much to say except the usual "shiny!"

[superluser]

Are you expecting them to pay for said tube, completely, with no say in how the money is spent?

I was trying to keep the money aspect out of it.  Insurance companies can certainly say when they will or will not continue funding someone's treatment, often based on actuarial data.  I'm not opposed to letting people set limits on funding, just that I'm unhappy with the idea of doctors refusing to treat a patient because of likelihood of failure.

[Amber Williams]

I was under the impression that the Terri case was an issue where her caretaker (her husband) had a major disagreement with her parents...and since there was no will or official document outlining what to do in such an event, it had gotten to the point they needed the courts to decide.  It just happened to be such a big spectacle that everyone and their cousin hopped aboard.

People. Talk with your loved ones and partners, and even try to get an official document, telling them what you want to happen in nasty situations like that.  In the same boat, people should talk to their partners straight up about their opinions on children and abortion.  I've seen a lot of couples go completly bonkers when something happened and it turned out they don't see eye-to-eye on the subject of kids.

[superluser]

I was under the impression that the Terri case was an issue where her caretaker (her husband) had a major disagreement with her parents...and since there was no will or official document outlining what to do in such an event, it had gotten to the point they needed the courts to decide.

As I understand it, the deal was that Terri Schiavo informed her husband of her wishes, but wrote no document detailing her wishes.  Her parents claim that her husband fabricated the story and just want the money that she got as part of a malpractice suit.  About $950,000 of that had been used for Terri's care, so most of her care was not paid by Medicaid.

[Brunhidden]

talking is never to be underestimated. however there can be such a thing as too much.

for example by the time my wife and i had our first official 'date' we had already agreed about when to 'pull the plug', what kind of house we would like to live in, and how to raise our children. we have a girl, but we also have the names prepared for the next 4 children of either gender we may have.

yah, thats a bit extreme, but it sounds perfectly reasonable to talk about issues such as caring for a child, abortion, marriage, and any other agreements before you ever become sexually active with a person. except of course if you think its fun to get so hammered at a party you remember nothing and barf up things you are pretty sure you never ate. oh yeah, a key qualification of 'fun' is not remembering it at all, this is why i do not understand 'fun'.

in a slightly insensitive analogy its like talking to an insurance company at the same time as talking to a car salesman- the time between them should be kept to a minimum.

And thats how you make a welfare che- uh, I mean baby.

[EvilIguana966]

Actually, properly applied abstinence education can be very effective, despite the inundation of "progressive" views on sex that young people receive.  Heres a study that talk about that:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/BG1533.cfm

I do realize that some people will always have sex when they would be better of not doing so.  That much is really not in dispute, and there should be a system in place to deal with that.  But I think you would be surprised just how malleable a person's sexual conduct is.  Our minds are not as hardwired as we used to think. 

So your saying a  five year old artical, with little or no actual statistical data,  on a website dedicated to a strict conservitive view point some how proves that abstenaince only programs work?

Proves?  Not definitively of course, but it provides some hard data to back up one point of view.  Your objections don't really hold any water.  Was the world really that much different in April 2002 that the research no longer applies?  I don't think you can honestly say yes to that.  There is plenty of statistical data in the article, but if you are looking for a simple numerical value to describe an issue which is fundamentally about the human mind and how it is affected by the environment, I don't think you will ever be satisfied by any honest study.  Furthermore, the Heritage foundation is hardly what you could call unreliable.  Did you by any chance take a look at the citations in that article?  They aren't just making things up as they go.  It seems to me that you lack any real substantive argument against the content of the article. 

You are also doing something I find very common among my idealogical opponents: setting an impossibly high standard for supporting research.  Basically you say that because it is hosted on a website dedicated to a conservative point of view, or otherwise backed by an organization that supports the conclusion, it must be discounted.  That basically negates the validity of any source I can find, because a study that supports a cause is very unlikely to be linked, hosted, supported, or funded by a group that opposes said cause.  The fact of the matter is that even if a study was conducted by a purely nonpartisan entity and originally published in a purely nonpartisan journal, the chances that the particular journal has a full web archive and will show up on a search engine in the original form are small.  When you consider that the article I linked was really a compilation of the findings of numerous previous articles and studies, it is highly unlikely that I could find it anywhere other than a website that generally supports it's conclusions.  It's also common sense that a researcher who starts off with no opinion on a subject, then finds the data in support of one side of the argument, would himself end up supporting the findings of his project. 

If you can point out, specifically, flaws in the methodology and data of the article, then do so.  If not, stop trying to obfuscate the point with unproven accusations of bias.  I won't hold it against you if you can't, you probably have plenty of reasons to think the way you do about it, but confusing other people about it is wrong. 

Well the medical comunity disagrees American Academy of Pediatrics for one,  hell even congress gets it from the 2004 report you can see some of the  misinformation

Teaching that Aids can be passed threw tears, half the gay teen age boys have aids, or that Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

I find it interesting that you can trash my article for bias, then, with seemingly straight face, link an article whose authors are the Democrats in the House of representatives as if they themselves have no potential bias.  That said, I'm willing to give your article consideration and I will even go so far as to say that it makes some reasonable points.  Assuming that what is being said is true, and since I don't have anything refuting it right now I have no reason not to, then there have been some significant cases of misinformation in sexual education that ought to be corrected.  One thing I am definitely NOT in favor of is misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, especially in education.  If you need to lie to support your case then maybe your case isn't that great in the first place.  I think my side of this issue can be supported without any such inaccuracies, and pro-abstinence sex education can be taught without them as well. 

Your article doesn't really seem to refute anything said in mine though.  The gist of my article was that responsibly presented pro-abstinence education does have an effect on the sexual activity of the kids.  Beyond that, it more or less proves that people are not as hard-wired for promiscuity as your side is claiming, and that is the underlying issue at play. 

Independent state run studies found that sexual activity actualy went up after the abstenance only sex education

Columbia University researchers found that although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" may wait longer to initiate sexual activity, 88 percent eventually have premarital sex and areless likely to use and form of protection.

I have no reason to doubt these studies exist, although I do believe upon closer examination I might find a lot to object to in their methodology.  There is a lot of vested interest by the establishment in keeping things the way they are, so I fully expect to see studies by the teachers unions, Democrat legislatures, and left leaning university departments that oppose me.  However, their ideological opposition alone is not enough to discount their findings, I will need to find flaws in their methodology to make a good argument against them. 

[superluser]

You are also doing something I find very common among my idealogical opponents: setting an impossibly high standard for supporting research.  Basically you say that because it is hosted on a website dedicated to a conservative point of view, or otherwise backed by an organization that supports the conclusion, it must be discounted.

Right.  I'm pro-life.  I think that the only exceptions should be in cases where the mother's life is in jeopardy, and I think that we should take away the license of any doctor who performs abortions for any other reason.

So I'm on your side.

We are right, so there's no need to fudge the data.  This is important.

There are 33 footnotes on that site.  Some have fairly uncontroversial statements.  I'll look at some of the more controversial ones. (footnotes in this message will be ordered to correspond to the footnotes in the Heritage foundation page)

Some of these I can't find information on, and I'll try come back to them later, probably when I can devote some real time to this (and your research is coming up at around the same time, Amber.)

6:

A review of the scientific literature reveals that, on average, condoms failed to prevent the transmission of the HIV virus--which causes the immune deficiency syndrome known as AIDS--between 15 percent and 31 percent of the time.

I can't find the original Weller article, but a subsequent reference to it (6a) claims that Weller's paper ``was flawed because it aggregated studies with varying definitions of condom use, directions of transmission, study design and types of index cases.''

The NIH study does not include the 31% statistic.

18:

There are currently 10 scientific evaluations (described below) that demonstrate the effectiveness of abstinence programs in altering sexual behavior.

I don't necessarily know about 10, but there are certainly several studies showing statistically significant (and often large) reductions in sexual activity.  I cited one (18a) before.

19:

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Michael Resnick and others entitled "Protecting Adolescents From Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health" shows that "abstinence pledge" programs are dramatically effective in reducing sexual activity among teenagers in grades 7 through 12.

Can't find the paper, but the citation says ``statistically significant,'' which is something completely different from ``dramatically effective.''

21:

The sexual activity rate of 15-year-olds across the county (as reported in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) dropped by a statistically significant amount from 46.6 percent to 31.6 percent during the intervention period

Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply causation.

22:

The teen pregnancy rate fell more rapidly in Monroe County than in comparison counties and in upstate New York in general, and the difference in the rate of decrease was statistically significant.

This study, on the other hand, does imply causation.

(and so on.  More when I have time.)


(6a) The Effectiveness of Condoms in Reducing Heterosexual Transmission of HIV
    Karen R. Davis; Susan C. Weller
    Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 31, No. 6. (Nov. - Dec., 1999), pp. 272-279.
(18a) Sex education attitudes and outcomes among North American women.
Williams MT; Bonner L
Adolescence [Adolescence] 2006 Spring; Vol. 41 (161), pp. 1-14.

EDIT: OK, Amber.  Here are your stats:

I should add a note that when I am talking disorder for the most part, I'm not talking about any and all.  I'm talking mainly about the ones where the person is handicapped to a point they will always need some form of caretaker.

That doesn't seem quite so difficult to find.

Let's see...

Got it! (*)

The data are given as ordered probits with respect to the natural log of income. (You do know what ordered probits are, right?)  There are five levels of health 1 being excellent, 5 being poor.  I've translated those into letters to make the data easier to understand:

A: -0.091 (0.020)
B: -0.086 (0.020)
C: -0.082 (0.021)
-0.087 (0.020)
E: -0.087 (0.021)
(std. err. is in parens)

This is actually the best way that these data could be expressed, since it gives the probabilities for health for every possible income.

(I'm going to see if I can't find someone with SPSS to help me make a graph)


(*) Economic Status and Health in Childhood: The Origins of the Gradient
    Anne Case; Darren Lubotsky; Christina Paxson
    The American Economic Review, Vol. 92, No. 5. (Dec., 2002), pp. 1308-1334.

[Netami]

Oh god... Wall of text crits you for eight million damage. You die!

Uf... on topic.

Abortion sends babies to Jesus faster. 

[Caswin]

Uf... on topic.

Abortion sends babies to Jesus faster. 

Yeah... if you think about it that way, the opening email kind of failed on (yet) another level.

[superluser]

Abortion sends babies to Jesus faster. 

And then Jesus sends them straight to Hell because they're not baptized.

(Oh, sorry, I mean ``the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God'')

[Brunhidden]

under this logic people who rape and murder small children would be given the title of saints.

ever had a conversation with one of those people? seriously, the urge to wash yourself does not go away for a week and the urge to punch them does not go away after punching them. saints they aint.

Thats what I do, I bring the pain