Efforts to restore public funding for birth control services in Missouri shot down with the support of pro-life groups. As Neil says, this kind of things makes it difficult to believe that pro-life groups are centrally motivated by the putative wrongness of abortion rather than by a general desire for more intense regulation of sexual activity. Which, really, shouldn't be very controversial since it's clearly what pro-life groups themselves say.
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The Party of Teen Pregnancy
21 May 2007 07:17 am
Comments (25)
You need to ask yourself the next question. Why? Why so obsessed with sex and all that?
Then you think that these are the same people who think nothing about attacking other countries, draining the treasury, draining household economies.
They think stress and chaos are good things.
Abortion (and more recently homosexuality), is an issue designed so really bad people can feel good about themselves without having to make any personal sacrifice. It's pretty clear, looking at the roots of the Religious Right movement, which have been examined pretty closely, that abortion as the huge issue only came about so they could fight the culture war that they wanted to fight on race via proxy.
Matt,
This really is such a tired canard. Ultimately, it is only an ad hominem argument. It is also false.
It is true that many, including Catholics, have a vision of human sexuality that rejects a contraceptive culture--one that separates sex from marriage and procreation. But that teaching is different from, and less important (in the sense that theft is not as bad as, say, murder) than our opposition to abortion.
But it simply does not logically follow from my opposition to public provision of contraceptives that my opposition to abortion is not motivated by the belief that each abortion unjustly ends a human life. Just because I disagree with a certain putative means to reduce the number of abortions (and it is hardly well established that government distribution of birth control reduces the number of abortions), it does not follow that I am not actually prolife.
Even if it did follow, however, what of it? If prolifers are correct (as of course we are) about the horror of abortion, then no matter how craven our actual motives for being prolife, you more enlightened types had better get on board. And if we are wrong, then spend more time coming up with arguments about how what is clearly alive and obviously human is not a "person" and therefore doesn't deserve human rights--oops, I mean "person rights." Or perhaps the ad hominem fallacy is the best you can do.
Karmakin,
abortion as the huge issue only came about so they could fight the culture war that they wanted to fight on race via proxy
I see, because more abortions means more black people...
Shorter Bill: Abortion is a horrible thing, the taking of another life. But its not as bad as paying taxes.
Bill, how is MY's post an ad hominem? He takes a specific case, the Missouri bill, examines it in the light of anti-choice rhetoric in other cases, and draws conclusions based on this evidence. You may disagree with those conclusions, but your rebuttal (I am obviously right, but I will not deign to give evidence of this) is sorely lacking. I do not doubt the sincerity of your anti-abortion stance, but the issue is that you won't support non-abortion methods to reduce unwated pregnancy (we *do* have the studies that show that abstinence programs don't work), and many (though perhaps not you) anti-abotion advocates do not support pre- or post-natal care programs, publicly funded pre-K, or other public services to make it easier for a young woman to keep and raise a child if she so choses. So in the absence of any real advocacy for policy that touches on the life and health of children and women other than an opposition to abortion and birth-control we are left with the parsimonious conclusion that (most, or a statistically signifanct percentage of) anti-choicers just kind of hate female sexuality and want to use that revulsion to advance a broader partisan agenda.
That's my take anyway.
Bill, there are two approaches if one considers abortion horrible. One approach is to pursue policies that will reduce the number of abortions. Another approach is to make oneself feel as self-righteous as possible regarding one's opposition. Personally, the only group of pro-lifers I'm going to take seriously is the former group. The latter group is the sort that's obsessed with opposition to birth control. The pro-life crowd needs to get their lunatic, anti-birth-control fringe under control before they can ever hope to reduce abortion in this country.
Justin,
It is ad homimen in the macro-sense: what if it were true that pro-life people really just wanted to regulate sex? That would be a point about people and their motives, not about the merits of the abortion argument. That's what the ad hominem fallacy entails--arguments against people and their motives rather than their arguments.
Now you shift the argument to "the absence of any real advocacy for policy that touches on the life and health of children and women" which is just a ridiculous claim. Have you ever read Catholic Social teaching? Any idea how much lobbying for the expansion of aid to women and children the Catholic church undertakes?
And there is plenty of ambiguity in the evidence about the impact of a contraceptive culture on teen pregnancy. Studies in just the last few years have shown a surprising disconnect between the availability of birth control and reductions in teen pregnancy.
As I noted above, however, a nonconsequentialist approach to ethics means that one might have principles reasons for rejecting public provision of birth control *even if* it would reduce the number of abortions. That is not logically an indictment of one's sincerity in opposing abortion.
If you want to know of the efforts of pro-life people to care for women in need you should look into Catholic Social teaching and the lobbying of the Church in this country. You could also look at groups like Birthright or at the network of Women's Care Centers across the country.
Or you could just sit in a chair and say "if they cared about women they'd buy them contraceptives. If they don't do that they do nothing. What's that you say? They don't do that? They hate women and sexuality."
one might have principles reasons for rejecting public provision of birth control *even if* it would reduce the number of abortions
One might, true. However, it leads us to two possibilities: one, abortion is really not that important to someone who holds these beliefs. Fair enough. Public funding for birth control might be considered far, far more offensive to a pro-life fiscal conservative than abortion itself.
The other possibility is that the principles held by that individual are stupid. Now bear with me, here. yes, they might consider abortion a horrible thing on the level of the holocaust. But they also find any public discussion of sexual public health issues icky, and their primary interest in opposition to abortion is to make themselves feel self-righteous. In this sense, I can see how any public initiatives to reduce demand for abortion could raise their ire.
Bill,
Do you really believe anything you say what you're saying? I mean, come on. Lying is a sin, after all.
The story below is about the true face of your movement. STD's that cause cancer are GOOD because they discourage promiscuity:
"For a time, Georgia was poised to become the latest state to require preteen girls to be vaccinated against a virus that causes cervical cancer. .... But state lawmakers nixed the plans after aggressive lobbying by religious conservatives, who argued that vaccinating young girls could promote promiscuity. The human papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer is transmitted through sexual contact."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052000584.html)
According to your movement, people who engage in premarital sex should DIE. Your movement supports the use of cancer to discourage sex. Your movement considers a slow, painful death by cervical cancer to be an effective means for discouraging promiscuity. Let the fornicators die.
How hard was it to find this simple, highly illustrative story? I just clicked on the front page of today's Washington Post. Yep, it was that easy to find a story about your movement's belief that people who engage in premarital sex should die of cancer. And that is the true face of your movement.
This is not an ad hominem attack on you, of course. Only your movement.
Some more interesting info from the Post article:
Cervical cancer kills 10 women a day in the U.S. and one in four U.S. women ages 14 to 59 is infected with HPV, according to a recent report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[snip]
The religious conservatives did not want the government to mandate a vaccine for "something that is only contracted through sexual activity," said Sadie Fields, executive director of the Georgia Christian Alliance.
Do you think cancer is good too, Bill?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052000584.html
cxz:Not quite.
The goal is to present themselves as the judges of what is moral and immoral. The sole judges, may I add. Morality is by definition, what they do.
So when they start to discriminate, well, they're by definition moral, so by definiton discrimination must be a moral stance.
Bill:What you miss, is that just maybe there's a number of us who take a moral stance that getting in the way of birth control is immoral. Full stop.
Actually, the fact that we celebrate our birthdays when we're delivered and that we don't mandate pregnancy testing to find potential negligence-caused miscarriages provides better proof that just maybe this idea of life beginning at conception is something that we as a society don't really put too much stock in.
Owenz,
I'm not against the vaccine, nor I suspect are the majority of pro-life folks, but I have not seen the polling. So, um, no, I don't think cancer is a good thing. Nice try though.
Constantine, always good to pull out the Holocaust example. It actually illustrates a further fallacy often lurking in these discussions. "If they were really serious about abortion, they'd do anything to stop it."
Sometimes I wish it were so. I mean, you and I probably watch the History Channel and imagine we'd have done anything to stop Hitler. Yet we have (depending on your age) both lived through genocides--at a minimum in Rwanda and Darfur, if not elsewhere. How much have we done to stop it? Does this call into question the truth that genocide is unspeakably wrong?
The fact is, though we say "never again" and "we'd do anything to stop it," many things distract us from our commitment to end genocide. Indeed, there is still slave labor in the world, and we barely make time to notice that. Does this point up our own weakness or the falsity of the antislavery view?
I don't find public discussions of sexuality icky. I do give to Birthright and to Catholic Charities, the latter being the 2nd largest charity after United Way in the country. It does lots for women and children in need, all across the country, every day. I also give to Catholic Relief Services, one of the most admired international relief agencies worldwide. These facts don't make me self-righteous (or they ought not) but they do put the lie to the notion that pro-life institutions don't care about the poor, don't care about women, and don't care about children.
Karmakin,
If whites wanted to wage a race war against blacks, which would be a more effective tactic?
A. ban abortions
B. give poor women contraceptives
Constantine, always good to pull out the Holocaust example.
The prolifers seem to think so, don't they?
In the end, reducing abortion isn't considered that important. Some of them, such as yourself, are more interested in creating Roman Catholic framework for dealing with public policy issues... it's not a means to an end, it's an end in itself. Thus, accomplishing real-world goals is less important than the feeling that they're engaging in the right acts.
The acts of the pro-life movement is more about caring about aesthetic issues ("do we look good while doing this?" and "are we ensuring that our personal moral methods are being served?") rather than actually solving problems. Ultimately, it's an aesthetic issue for them. This is brought up quite a bit here on the liberal blogosphere where people express preference for Democrats who appeal to the rheotrical aesthetic preferences of activists rather than candidates most likely to accomplish the policy goals of those same activists.
Many pro-choicers THOUGHT that they could "work with" the pro-life movement by agreeing, "yes, abortion is a terrible thing. Let's work together to reduce abortion," but the pro-lifers turned out to be so extremist and so uninterested in real-world effects and actual reduction of abortion that any possibility of cooperation broke down since the pro-lifers were so focused on their fanatic aesthetic preferences.
Abortion is a controversial topic, but I'm sure we can all at least agree that everyone should drive as safely as possible.
I therefore propose legislation banning safety belts, air bags, and "crumple zones" in car design, or any other measure that's intended make cars safer, because the ultimate effect of doing so will be to encourage people to drive unsafely. People who don't like it will just have to take the bus.
Abortion is a controversial topic, but I'm sure we can all at least agree that everyone should drive as safely as possible.
I therefore propose legislation banning safety belts, air bags, and "crumple zones" in car design (or any other measure intended to make cars safer) because the ultimate effect of such "safety" measures is to encourage reckless driving. If people realize that any car crash they're involved in is likely to be fatal, they will be motivated to drive more carefully.
Please ignore the first version of my post.
I think this issue has much to do with the failure, empirically demonstrated, of govt abstinence programs.
Govt abstinence programs, as far as I can tell, present abstinence as one of the choices that the student is to pick from a range of choices that might or might not be picked at the end of a utilitarian calculation that a high school kid is supposed do. I have a hard time believing that anyone ever thought that they'd ever have an effect.
One thing that schools used to do the same way is that they would present info about smoking cigarettes the same way and then they would respect the choice made by the student, high schools used to have smoking areas or rooms for them, in the case of cigarettes the same as giving out birth control in school. They don't do that anymore, given high school kids not smoking is something schools are actually serious about. Not that they always succeed.
I don't know what the 'pro life' groups in question are about, but I don't think it's all that big of a stretch to think there are some parents in the mix. The job of a parent of a 14 year old is to overrule said 14 year old when they are about to make their own decision about something that they might not regret when they are 14, but very well might regret when they are 35 or 40. One might not regret getting nookie in high school later on, but one may very well regret it, and given that no 35 or 40 year old that doesn't need mental help will have deep problems with a nookieless high school career, I don't think such parents are kooks.
Govt abstinence programs, as far as I can tell, present abstinence as one of the choices that the student is to pick from a range of choices
Nope. Government abstinence programs are "abstinence only," which is to say, that in exchange for federal funding, these programs are not allowed to teach students about birth control and STD prevention.
What Bill is missing here is that most of us here don't need to debate the issue of the legality of abortion. If you want arguments along those lines, there are plenty of them elsewhere. On the other hand, we are concerned with the motivations and public posturing of pro-lifers. It's important for dealing with them politically and winning the opinion battle. And attacks on the motivations' of a policy's advocates are 100% legitimate in that arena.
Constantine:
Does that mean that "other choices" cannot be presented in a particular federally funded class, or that they cannot present them at all, as in not in a non federally funded 'health' class that the school may require or not?
Let's stop talking about Bill's views. He seems to be something of an outlier as pro-life folks go, even if he doesn't know it himself.
Constantine, you went a little far with "The acts of the pro-life movement is more about caring about aesthetic issues ..... rather than actually solving problems. " If your ethics really are nonconsequential, than problem-solving isn't your goal; you're just supposed to do the "right thing" even if the predictable consequences are stupid, unfortunate, or downright evil. Of course, when your ethical system produces results like that, one might conclude that there's something wrong with the system itself.
And mpowell nailed it: this is a political struggle, not an ethics debate. As interesting as that debate can be, most of us consider the question settled.
mpowell: exactly, attacking the actions and motivations of people is not a fallacy in this context because those actions are exactly what were are concerned about in political debate.
Bill: AlanC9 is right that your particular stance isn't the important one here, so this is it for me, but just real quick...I'm familiar with Catholic social teachings and policies because I am, in fact, a Catholic. I don't think the Church does enough on the political stage. The social advocacy in the American Church has been muted in the last few decades while anti-abortion takes a primacy I don't think is justified.
Justin,
If you are familiar with the breadth and depth of the Church's social teachings, then it is puzzling you would have written this: "So in the absence of any real advocacy for policy that touches on the life and health of children and women other than an opposition to abortion and birth-control . . ."
If your view was simply that the Church ought to be doing even more than it is, well, that's rather a different argument. It would have to begin with a frank acknowledgment of just how much the Church does, and then some argument as to why more was required. I certainly would admit that I don't do enough--not for the unborn, not for people in Darfur. But both sets of people are worthy of my and the world's attention and defense.
Comments closed June 04, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"The Party of Teen Pregnancy"
I thought it was a 90's nostalgia party.
Posted by Petey | May 21, 2007 7:37 AM