for poor women only, of course

Good grief. Speaking of incoherent…

Now you perhaps understand why I believe that the total meaninglessness of the illegality of abortion is a settled fact.

Except for the highly increased chances of having an unsafe or botched abortion when they are illegal… doesn’t that factor in here? (Psst. The answer is yes.)

Wow, was I ever incoherent last night on this thread last night. Seemed funny at the time. I should know better than to operate machinery when half-asleep.

Wayward -

It’s much more complicated than “Their god hates sex.” It’s more like “their men see a positive social good in keeping women as completely subservient reproductive laborers, and have created an elaborate mythology around a few religious stories to maintain control.”

I think you are giving the overwhelming majority of them far too much credit.

The religious right isn’t a group of evil geniuses as much as they are a bunch of superstitious ignoramuses.

The Bible/Vatican/preferred religious authority says it, they believe it, and that’s that.

Also, in characterizing the danger of childbirth, I should have included places that have high rates of child marriage. Young women, whose pelvises haven’t finished developing, are at much higher risk for fistula and really a lot of other birth complications. I was responding to the commenter who wondered if abortions are more dangerous in these countries because childbirth is more dangerous. I was trying to say that unless malnourished (or too young), childbirth isn’t that much more dangerous there than here. That is, it is the illegality of the abortion that makes it so dangerous, not the poverty of the country.

Unless doctor-patient confidentiality goes both ways, I doubt many doctors would admit that they would break the law. I know that if I were a doctor, I wouldn’t.

Anyone got a law lesson here?

Sorry if it already covered.

I got a bit of that on my MA defense as well when I said that claims from the anti-sex people about condoms and “pores that can allow HIV through.”

AIUI this is actually true of animal-skin condoms. Which is why you should use latex unless you or your parter is allergic.

We ain’t supposed to be rational. Get it?

When you tell them, “hey, I’m a 27-year-old married mom and I don’t want anymore kids, and my husband and I sure as hell aren’t going to abstain until menopause,” they have nothing to say to that.

That actually came up for me once among some coworkers a couple of years ago. I was having lunch with some of the other teachers at a school I had a short-term contract with. We were all talking about our kids and they asked if I wanted more kids (I was the youngest teacher there). I said no and one of them replied that accidents happen. I then said that that’s what the clinic was for, because I wasn’t having more children. They were all shocked that I would admit to such a thing. And now that I think of it, one of the women who was the most put off by my reply was the department head and it probably had something to do with why my contract wasn’t extended.

Instead Yglesias and you “derail” the discussion, to use your term, by argumenting from disbelief and by just assuming that deterrence work.

I´m not a social scientist and only a very mellow feminist. I’m a lawyer with a special interest in the history of criminal law. And deterrence power of criminal law is not that strong. It works more or less on property crimes, white collar crime and so on. But if the values of society or a large or powerful enough class of society clashes with the law, the law will not prevail.

In Germany in the twenties abortion was considered wrong, dirty, unspeakable, unchristian. It was also illegal in all cases and harshly punished.
For all that it was estimated that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 abortions yearly. Only 1000 to 3000 cases were prosecuted. (Population of germany then about 65 mill.)

Now you perhaps understand why I believe that the total meaninglessness of the illegality of abortion is a settled fact.