Keith Devens .com

Pro-life position growing among youth

Bill Humphries, who somehow frames this in terms of Stalin's "useful idiots", points to what I found to be a pretty insightful article from the New York Times on the increasing tendency among young people to be against abortion. For some reason it's in the "Fashion and Style" section.

Experts offer a number of reasons why young people today seem to favor stricter abortion laws than their parents did at the same age. They include the decline in teenage pregnancy over the last 10 years, which has reduced the demand for abortion. They also cite society's greater acceptance of single parenthood; the spread of ultrasound technology, which has made the fetus seem more human; and the easing of the stigma once attached to giving up a child for adoption.

The most commonly cited reason for the increasingly conservative views of young people is their receptiveness to the way anti-abortion campaigners have reframed the national debate on the contentious topic, shifting the emphasis from a woman's rights to the rights of the fetus.

Britni Hoffbeck, another speech student at Red Wing High who opposes abortion, and who says her views are more conservative than those of her parents, put her argument succinctly: "It's more about the baby's rights than the woman's rights."

Some young people who oppose abortion, and who were born after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 declared that were is a constitutional right to abortion, have adopted a new rhetoric. One of them is Kelly Kroll, a junior at Boston College and president of American Collegians for Life, who says she is a "survivor of the abortion holocaust" because she was adopted.

The article also cites some interesting statistics about teenage pregnancy rates and public opinion.

Update: From Technorati I ran across a great post about this article from David Mills at tourchstonemag.com. Unfortunately, his blog is all messed up regarding permalinks. So go here and it should probably be at the top.

So as I said, the first quarter of the article is cheering, because it says that young people are increasingly pro-life. The rest of the article is revealing, because it shows how our pro-choicers think and the extent to which they must deny the reality of any contradictory moral insight and treat people who disagree with them as having been manipulated or conditioned into believing what they believe.

Nice, that sounds like he's talking right to Bill

The last three-quarters of the article try to explain this shift, in other words to explain it away. The article nowhere suggests that young people may be making a rational moral decision. It assumes the pro-life youth must believe what they believe for other reasons.

Anyway, go to the link and read the rest. Unfortunately, David doesn't have an RSS feed, so it's unlikely I'll read his site again. That makes me sad.

Permalink | 8 Comments | Tags: Abortion, Opinions/Politics | id 3678

19:56 (utc-5)
edited: 2003-03-31 00:07 (utc-5)

Comments

You know, that's a very good question.

I've always wondered why people on the left tend to support abortion, which kills babies, yet tend to object to the death penalty, which kills people like convicted murderers.

The one thing I can pin it on is that the left has a warped theory of personal responsibility. That's why they think women shouldn't be responsible for carrying their baby to term if they get pregnant. That's why they think people shouldn't be held accountable for capital crimes. That's why they're big believers in welfare, for hey, people aren't responsible enough to support themselves all the time.

That answer doesn't totally satisfy me, but I think it's at least a start.

I never understood the opposite side of the argument Keith. Your pro-life, but think killing someone as punishment is justified even if you occasionally kill an innocent man. I was actually pro-death penalty up until i year ago when I looked over the number of people who died who were wrongly convicted of murder. DNA evidence or other factors later cleared them but it was too late. How screwed up is that? Better to let 100 murders rot in jail then kill 1 innocent man. I think that's a fairly good argument for the opposite side. It's also the reason I can't stomach the current war as you know.

I'm actually wavering back and forth in the pro-life/pro-choice debate. Thinking some things through so I'm staying out of that

Well, there are two separate issues with the death penalty, but you only bring up one.

First, is whether the death penalty is just in principle as a punishment for murderers, rapists, etc. I believe that it is.

Second is whether that penalty is being correctly and justly applied in practice. It may not be in every case.

Now, since we're fallible, there will almost inevitably be people killed who are innocent. But to pick a number and say, "if one innocent person out of N number of guilty people is killed than the death penalty is unjust" is arbitrary.

If justice isn't being correctly served, then that implies that those systems in which it isn't should be examined and reformed, not that we should reduce our standards of punishment.

The problem there in though is that we can prevent those fatal mistakes by instead of killing someone who has commited murder or what have you, putting him in prison for life. Last time I checked, it was cheaper by thousands of dollars, and should we mistakenly put some in jail we can always take him the heck out! You simply don't have that choice when you use the death penalty. If you have any real value of innocents life, I don't see how you can support it. You can't shrug off killing people. The fact that killing a murder gives the victims (in some cases) satisfaction isn't as high a priority as not killing an innocent man mistakenly in my opinion. It's also been statistically proven that the death penalty doesn't discourage crime. I'm not going to even get into the problem of why minorities who commit the exact same crime in the same brutal manner get the death penalty more frequently. If a system is severely screwed up. You don't shrug your shoulders and let it continue. You reform it until it makes sense, or don't do it.

Just to jump in: the death penalty and abortion are quite different. I'm against both, but you can't equate killing hundreds of violent criminals after 7 to 10 (or more) years of due legal process with killing hundreds of thousands of babies in a matter of minutes for money. Men and women on death row have the right to a jury-trial, numerous appeals, etc. The motive for their death is to protect society. Abortion can be performed on anyone for any reason at anytime with no more than a week (as far as I know) required for consideration -- and most states don't require any waiting period at all. Numerically, they're not at all proportionate... pro-death penalty/ anti-abortion conservatives are just not being hypocritcal in the same way that pro-abortion/ anti-death pentalty liberals are.

The 'pro-life' vs 'women's rights' issue has always been defined by a person's belief about 'baby's rights'. Basically, when does the combination of sperm and egg become a 'person' with rights independent of the pregnant woman.

Whether your beliefs are based in science or religion, if you believe that moment occurs with the first cell division, you are 'pro-life'. Or if you believe the bundle of cells must be viable without the woman's support before attaining 'person' status, you believe in 'women's rights'.

All else is posturing and politics. Children brought into an environment which cannot provide love, food, shelter, medical services and education are effectively tortured their entire life. This extremely cruel and unusual punishment seems much more politically acceptable than abortion.

When sex education, birth control and acceptable support for both single mothers and adoption are unavailable or impractical, women's rights have a strong political justification. When they are available, baby's rights are harder ignore.

Leaves me wondering why so many 'pro-lifers' are anti-sex education, among the most abusive to single mothers and compleltely uninvolved with adoptions.....

Sunday, March 30, 2003

Pro-life position growing among youth

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