November 1, 2004

Abortion vs. other forms of murder

I just received an email from an old college friend urging me to vote for Bush. He said that the defining reason to vote for the man was abortion. (My husband finds this to be his defining reason for voting for Bush as well.)

It has mystified me that abortion can be so decisive to these people. But as I got thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that what I need to convince these people that President's can affect the lives and deaths of people in ways other than just abortion is statistics. I need some solid statistics that will show:

- how many people will die due to respiratory problems (or skin cancer, or ...) because the US did not sign the Kyoto Environment Treaty.
- how many people (not just Americans) have died in Afghanistan and Iraq due to American military actions?
- how many people (world wide) have died because of American consumption and waste? how many of these people, before dying, were forced to live their lives as slaves?
- how many people (world wide) have died or given birth to children with birth defects because Americans have chosen to eat food that has been sprayed with pesticides.

it's not as easy to track statistics like that. when a woman gets an abortion, two go in, one comes out. it's clear what happened. the cause and effect doesn't require much thought. the casualities are fairly easy to count.

but when a small baby dies because her mother had to work in fields sprayed with chemicals before she was born, there are a few more steps to make between my eating that food and that baby's death. the death is just as real. the child was just as innocent. but the ties between the cause and effect remain invisible to those who refuse to look.

20 comments:


  1. - how many people (not just Americans) have died in Afghanistan and Iraq due to American military actions?

    The Civilian death toll in Iraq has already far exceeded any military losses:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3962969.stm

    So much for life there being better without Saddam.



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  2. Even leaving aside the abortion issue, I don't believe that any single domestic issue is a good reason to vote or not vote for a President. What can the President really do about it? At best, the President can sign or veto the very last step. If the House and Senate don't have the proper people to speak to the bills and pass them up the chain, there's nothing the President can do. If anti-abortion bills keep getting blocked in the House or Senate, the President's opinions on the matter don't matter at all.

    The President has the most power in foreign policy. If war is declared, he is the commander in chief over all our armed forces. I do not think it's valid to let a single domestic issue trump questions like whether we feel safer with Bush or Kerry in charge of our soldiers and trillions of dollars of military equipment. Also, our President is going to have to deal with all the other heads of countries out there. I think it matters a lot if, for example, France is going to refuse to support our military actions just because the French prime minister and our President have personal issues with each other.

    Back to abortion, I also agree with you that there are larger issues at stake. If Bush's environmentally questionable policies result in releasing too many toxins into the world, it might end up killing or maiming far more unborn babies (not to mention destroying the health of already-born people as well) than abortions will ever claim.

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  3. i suspect that the abortion issue is big because the justices DO have something to say on the issue, and the next prez. may be appointing some of those justices.

    thanks for the link, richard. maybe i should start compiling some stats here, eh?


    ok, so let's start adding up the numbers:

    1000 + american casualties in iraq. (anyone know where i can find #'s on afghanistan?)
    100,000 iraqi civilians according to the article Richard pointed out
    10,000 +++ children die each year from pollution according to this article

    oh, wait. i just realized that we should break the iraqi stuff into years. sigh. when did this whole thing start again? march '03? and when did afghanistan get rolling? sometime in '02. so maybe i reduce the iraqi numbers. is there a statistician in the house who's up for fidgeting with all these numbers?

    and how many kids are aborted each year in america? 1,250,000 according to the email that that friend sent me.

    abortion is still winning given the numbers i have so far....

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  4. WOW! 1.25 million abortions? That's a LOT of abortions...

    According to the National Right To Life society, the yearly number has been dropping since 1980, and in 2000 it was estimated at 1.328 million. Link

    According to the Center for Disease Control, In 2000, 857,475 legal induced abortions were reported. Link

    However, the numbers don't really represent the real issue in my mind. It seems to me that the question turns on the right of a mother to control what happens to a foetal infant she's carrying. This is really a moral question, independent of numbers, and people are going to seek guidance from wherever they will.

    *** Unsolicited opinion from an extra-national***

    Being a secular left-libertarian (and definitely one of Dubya's "Liberals") I am inclined to support the option that leaves the moral reconciliations in the hands of the conscience of the individual, and not the state.

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  5. When abortion gets to 1.25 million a year it becomes a popularist issue. Nationmaster shows that the US has 4.17 abortions per 1000 people. It doesn't take many years before quite a large proportion of women have had one or more abortions - potentially more than have strong views in the other direction.

    However a lot of those people are going to be the young which tend to have to be persuaded hard even to vote these days, so who knows?

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  6. >I am inclined to support the option that leaves the moral reconciliations in the hands of the conscience of the individual, and not the state.

    perhaps this is why i'm not a libertarian (though i think i've voted for some on occasion). i just think there are issues that people will tend to choose the wrong path on. and it's fine with me if they want to screw themself. but when they're screwing me and everyone around me it's another issue. i'd say pollution is one of those instances when one man's fun (with his monster *echo "monster, monster, monster"* SUV) is another man's asthma.

    (i started this post this morning. then i went on a field trip with 70 some first graders. i doubt the post still fits where it was going to in the conversation, but i'm going to post it now anyway and come back later to edit if need be.) *sheepish smile as meg plops her post down and creeps out of the room*

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  7. >...it's fine with me if they want to screw themself. but when they're screwing me and everyone around me it's another issue.

    Well I share this opinion when it comes to issues of "the commons." I was directly addressing the abortion issue in my statement there. I'm actually a big supporter of tax-shifting in pollution issues, and making sure that costs include all reasonable "externalities."

    I think what I'd really like to be able to do is build a time machine, and when the full impact of the environmental recklessness becomes apparent, travel back and arrest the decision-makers who knowingly chose to ignore the risks, and bring them to the future where they could stand trial.

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  8. >I think what I'd really like to be able to do is build a time machine, and when the full impact of the environmental recklessness becomes apparent, travel back and arrest the decision-makers who knowingly chose to ignore the risks, and bring them to the future where they could stand trial.

    i'll help with grant writing or whatever else you need to have done to raise funding for this. ;-)

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  9. >I think what I'd really like to be able to do is build a time machine, and when the full impact of the environmental recklessness becomes apparent, travel back and arrest the decision-makers.

    Or you could ship all the garbage into the far distant future, when no one is alive to care! :-)

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  10. >Or you could ship all the garbage into the far distant future, when no one is alive to care! :-)

    with our luck, we'd end up picking a point when, unbeknownst to us, the human race was just beginning to take on super human powers, or perhaps just ending war once and for all, or just making contact with an alien race that was impressed with the lack of pollution on our planet.

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  11. >...a lot of those people are going to be the young which tend to have to be persuaded hard even to vote these days...

    I read a statistic that claimed less than 1 in 10 of the eligible voters 18-25 turned out to vote in this election, so your statement is bang-on. If there's anything that makes me sick at heart, it's that level of apathy among young voters. They could really have helped keep it from being a total wash. Not that it's any different here in Canada -- a huge amount of the political process is dominated by people in the 50+ age group -- probably because they come from a more politically-credible era, or have discovered through experience that who is in government actually does make a difference.

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  12. i think that once upon a time americans had some sense of their own future ("i'm gonna finish college, get married, have kids" or "i'm gonna get my degree, get a job and stay at that company the rest of my life"). and that future was going to include paying taxes and buying a house and being a good citizen.

    at least, that's the sense i get from my parents and grandparents. they grew up with a general plan and they had a fair sense of what it would entail because they'd seen their parents do it.

    but my generation (i'm an X-er, though i think BoBo probably fits me better) seems to have less sense of future. and i think the generation after me (what are they? Y?) have even less sense. they may presume they'll go to college. but for how long? who knows. maybe 4 years, maybe 5 or 6. and they'll change their major 3 times and they'll graduate and end up doing something completely other than their degree would dictate. life is far more random and therefore far harder to plan upon or to presume upon molding.

    and what is an election but molding the future?

    we live in a world that believes that something as simple as a date change (Y2K) can radically affect the way we live. whether it does or not is irrelevant. we believe it can make a difference. so why should we worry about president when something as simple as switching from 1999 to 2000 could make all the difference in the world. (buy a gun, a generator and a year's supply of food. the world is about to end.) who cares about who runs the nation when mentally you're holed up in a shack waiting for the end to come.

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  13. > we live in a world that believes that something as simple as a date change (Y2K) can radically affect the way we live. whether it does or not is irrelevant. we believe it can make a difference.

    Is believing that a single man 3000 miles away can destroy life as we know it all that different? Some people thought that the world was ending because Y2K was coming up. Other people think that the world is now ending because Bush is getting a second term. Are the two all that different?

    I just don't believe that the President holds so much power that it warrants people wanting to cry over an election result.


    By the way, I know many people who worked very hard for many months upgrading and rewriting things to make sure that Y2K was a non-issue (and some action plans stretched well over a year ahead of time). And, if we can prevent Y2K from being a disaster, why do people not believe that we can prevent Bush from being a disaster as well?



    > and what is an election but molding the future?

    A song and dance media event. It looks just like all the reality TV shows that have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

    And maybe those of us who don't vote simply hate the choices. If someone asked me to choose between having my right toe cut off or having my left toe cut off, I would think that the only sensible thing to do is to refuse to play (as much as possible). I strongly disagree with many aspects of both platforms.

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  14. you're also assuming that there are only two platforms. i've voted third party for the past three presidential elections, in large part because i want to make a statement about lack of choice. i don't want to pick between the lesser of two evils. i want to have at least 5 evils to choose from. (ok, ok. i just had to roll with that. what i really hope is that...) perhaps one of those choices will actually be one that i'm pleased to make.

    i DO think who we choose makes a difference. they might not be able to do anything radical, but they do offer a "feel" for America. even just the moral boost or bust, i think, makes a difference. the evangelicals now feel vindicated and strong and are going to do their best to institute the Old Testament laws as governmental laws. on the other hand, the environmentalists fear the damage Bush will enable or encourage (fight back at terrorism, go shopping!) and will get more radical (there's definitely a continuation and strengthening of the polarization of america here) in their attempts to convince the idiot (my word, maybe theirs as well) evangelicals that savings souls just to kill them with toxic chemicals doesn't make sense.

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  15. What can the President really do about it? At best, the President can sign or veto the very last step.

    Doesn't the President get to appoint people to key positions and boost election funds for his party ? I'd say his indirect power is rather bigger than his direct power. Power by proxy.

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  16. ah, tildy has found something that mr. bush is going to get to do:

    Biz as usual

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  17. I am now utterly convinced that abortion is the issue that brought Bush back for a second term. Until the Democrats find a way to deal with the abortion issue, I really don't see them winning another presidential election. The Christian Right (who are not necessarily christian nor are they necessarily right) have felt their power and will continue to flex it in upcoming elections. They will throw their weight behind whoever is pro-life and they have the grassroots network already in place because (as they did for this past election) they will simply use church networks to pass the word along.

    Personally, I don't really care who the president is. I believe that God is sovereign and he'll pick the right guy for his purposes (whether that guy deserves the position or not). But I do care that Christians are so vocally aligning themselves with a political party. What are they thinking?!!! It just makes me want to pull my hair out.

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  18. >But I do care that Christians are so vocally aligning themselves with a political party.

    I'm not sure how else God would go about picking the right guy, unless it was through some sort of divine intervention. Of course, as you point out, with Christians behaving in this way, the Republican Party becomes the Christian Party, and forces a political rift based upon religion into the public discourse. It might not be what you want to see happen, but apparently among Christians your opinion represents a minority. More popular is talk of the Clash of Civilizations, and forcing some sort of Armageddon in Iraq. It's the Crusades all over again. All I can hope is that there is a second Renaissance lying beyond the regression, and not some global state of war, which might very well occur if the US becomes sufficiently weakened by a prolonged occupation.

    I might also add here that from the outside, this is frightening to watch. To many tolerant, religiously-diverse countries (such as Canada), seeing the US morph into a demi-Theocracy is disturbing to the extreme. Are we now going to suffer trade penalties for allowing gay marriage and abortion, just as we presently do for our supposed "hidden domestic subsidies" (a.k.a. Universal Health Care)? What if Parliament passes the Marijuana decriminalization bill it's always talking about? Will there be a "war on drugs" up here? It's not nice to live in fear of your neighbours.

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  19. well, if God's the one orchestrating it all, then it's divine intervention either way, right? ;-) i think it's fair to say that if God wanted Ralph Nader to win, he'd find a way to get it to happen.

    I don't know that I'm in the minority. There are other Christians who didn't vote for Bush and there's probably a sizeable number of us. But we're not as vocal in coupling our spiritual views with a specific party (even when we're making our decisions based on spiritual reasons).

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  20. >then it's divine intervention either way, right?

    Fair enough! :D Of course, I'd really love to know what God's thinking considering His most recent choice...

    And, you know, you might be in the minority, but the only way to know for sure is to speak out, and see who speaks up with you. As is usually the case in any public issue, the volume of the message is assumed to correlate to its popularity and fidelity. The radical fundamentalists, who I would argue are not even Republicans (in the technical sense) but Authoritarians (if not Totalitarians), are usually the ones screaming the loudest. The Bush administration seems to be privileging a form of Christian values in its policies, and to hell with the letter and spirit of your Constitution. The silence on the part of American Christians implies your consent. What is the rest of the world to believe?

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