This post is not necessarily an argument, but it is something to think about.
My personal view and political view on abortion are not completely congruent. Personally, I'm only in favor of abortion in the instances of rape, incest, and when childbirth would present an immediate health risk for both mother and child where would be insurmountable odds for fatality. Politically, I'm not quite "pro-choice" and I'm not quite "pro-life" either. It continues my general tradition of not favoring any political extremes whatsoever.
I decided to take into account three prominent argumentative view points and approach them objectively.
"The Life Argument"
Central to the debate, especially when it comes to abortion laws tied to pregnancy terms, is when life begins. Aside from the colloquial definition about what "life" is, what about the scientific definition of life?
The scientific definition (or really criteria) of life is generally regarded as anything that exhibits a period of a self-sustaining biological process. A single cell organism and a multi-cell organism, in any stage of development, actually meets this criteria. Anything that that does not exhibit a period of a self-sustaining biological process, or activity for that matter, is not considered life.
In reality, one can argue that this begins when the fertilized egg moves into the uterus as a zygote with the zygote, through cell division, increasing in size while travelling through the Fallopian tube and becoming a blastocyst roughly five days later.
This argument could be further looked at, especially in regards to analyzing it from a religious (objectively, because I am agnostic) or human rights point of view, however, it would be moot because I'm approaching this argument from its common denominator.
"They Can Be Adopted Argument"
The general emotional response by those that are against abortion is that children that are not "wanted" can be easily adopted by a loving family. I decided to take a look at this from three statistical points: the rate of adoptions, rate of abortions, and the rate of how often women choose to relinquish their children for adoption instead of option for an abortion.
I decided to take a look at the adoption numbers from 2002-2011. They are available here. It does not paint a complete picture, considering I elected not to use adoption rates in the 1970s as affected by the legalization of abortion, but it paints a little bit more relevant picture. Here are five key takeaways:
- At the end of FY2011, 59% of children that were waiting to be adopted was because parental rights had been terminated. It was higher in 2002. However, now, there's fewer kids waiting to be adopted.
- For 6 of the past 10 years, the number of adoptions in a given fiscal year ranged from 50,000 to 52,000. It increased to a high of 57,000 in FY 2009.
- The number of children waiting to be adopted, number of children served in public foster care, the number of children in public foster care at the end of the year, and number of children entering public foster care, have been on a slight declining trend.
- For five years more children entered public foster care than exited; it was reverse in fiscal years 2007-2010. In 2011, roughly 10,000 more kids entered foster care than exited.
- Even the statistical report itself noted that are flaws in its gathering of statistics, considering most of it is accumulated in six month spans.
Adoption rates in general nosedived after state by state reforms, culminating with Roe v. Wade decision, that legalized abortion in the 1970s, as well as the rate that infants were relinquished by their birth mothers for adoption. I had trouble finding numbers past the 1990s, but a trend that has been taking place that by 1990, less than 2% of women place their newborn children up for adoption, a rate which was at 1.4% in 2002. The abortion rate was 19.6 per 1000 women in 2008, or 1.96%, which was a reported uptick.
I also want to note that the median time spent in foster care has increased from 12 months in 2000 to 15.4 months in 2010, with the average time spent in foster care for child welfare participants being 26.7 months. In essence, while fewer kids are being put up for adoption and entering into the foster care system in general, they're actually staying longer. However, the numbers presented by Children's Rights do not specify statistics for newborns entering foster care from birth and seeing how long they are in foster care before they are adopted -- at least from what I was able to gather.
I do want to note that I was unable to find any polled statistic that asked a question of whether or not a woman chose abortion in lieu of adoption or vice versa. The answer to that question could be deduced from the aforementioned statistics, however, it would be admittedly short sighted and flawed. In the end though, Cory Richards, head of the Guttenmach Institute that often conducts adoption research, wrote in 2007 that it is erroneous to believe that adoption rates and abortion rates are related and refutes the notion that adoption solves the problem of abortion. His conclusion that it will be far more effective to curve abortion numbers by helping women prevent unwanted pregnancies, which is the prominent reason behind abortion in the first place. This assessment has been apparently been vindicated based upon the success of a free birth control program preventing unwanted pregnancies in a Washington University study conducted in St. Louis.
I also want to note that the median time spent in foster care has increased from 12 months in 2000 to 15.4 months in 2010, with the average time spent in foster care for child welfare participants being 26.7 months. In essence, while fewer kids are being put up for adoption and entering into the foster care system in general, they're actually staying longer. However, the numbers presented by Children's Rights do not specify statistics for newborns entering foster care from birth and seeing how long they are in foster care before they are adopted -- at least from what I was able to gather.
I do want to note that I was unable to find any polled statistic that asked a question of whether or not a woman chose abortion in lieu of adoption or vice versa. The answer to that question could be deduced from the aforementioned statistics, however, it would be admittedly short sighted and flawed. In the end though, Cory Richards, head of the Guttenmach Institute that often conducts adoption research, wrote in 2007 that it is erroneous to believe that adoption rates and abortion rates are related and refutes the notion that adoption solves the problem of abortion. His conclusion that it will be far more effective to curve abortion numbers by helping women prevent unwanted pregnancies, which is the prominent reason behind abortion in the first place. This assessment has been apparently been vindicated based upon the success of a free birth control program preventing unwanted pregnancies in a Washington University study conducted in St. Louis.
The bottom line? The question would have to be what is the exact relationship between the rates of abortion and the rates of adoption, especially when one is chosen in lieu of the other. While it somewhat exposes the holes in the "they can be adopted"argument with no real concrete data that supports that standpoint, it is true that almost all newborn babies that are put up for adoption ended up being adopted at some point and the general consensus (granted almost overwhelmingly anecdotes given on adoption lifestyle websites and blogs) is that the wait times aren't very long as typically the demand for children exceeds the supply of children (and that was really creepy writing that line).
"It's My Body Argument"
I generally stay away from this because unless I have no interest, nor any business, in telling a woman what I think she should or should not do with her body.
I'm not going to get into details about the various views this question about the woman's body raises because believe me, we have seen and heard just about every last one of them and then some. Yet, this is almost an extension of the life argument, with a twist.
When Laci Peterson was killed in 2002, her husband Scott Peterson was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for both Laci and their unborn son. Often times, in many states, whenever a pregnant woman is slain, the criminal is charged with not one, but two counts of murder (the mother and the unborn child). While this is difficult to bring up, it does expose inconsistency -- if a pregnant woman is slain, additionally resulting in the death of the unborn child, and a vast majority of law enforcement agencies charge the offender with two counts of murder, then what is abortion exactly? Abortion does result in the death of an unborn child.
At the same time though, if you look on your Census long form, it doesn't ask if you have any current unborn children for statistical purposes. In fact, I seriously doubt that the Census Bureau actually counts yet-to-be-born-fetuses as statistical members of the population.
Are those extremes? Probably, but it does take into consideration in regards to what is considered life, what isn't considered life, and when and where the line of government intervention should be drawn, especially when abortion is actually a private, difficult decision for the mother or the mother and her partner. Right in there lies a question that has no objective answer. Should the dominion of the woman's body include the unborn child, and thus free from the intervening arms of government? Or should we consider the woman and the unborn child not one, but two separate distinct persons with individually recognized civil and human rights?
The lack of congruence in the life definition, even in our own legal system, speaks volumes and something to seriously consider when arguing for or against abortion.
"It's My Body Argument"
I generally stay away from this because unless I have no interest, nor any business, in telling a woman what I think she should or should not do with her body.
I'm not going to get into details about the various views this question about the woman's body raises because believe me, we have seen and heard just about every last one of them and then some. Yet, this is almost an extension of the life argument, with a twist.
When Laci Peterson was killed in 2002, her husband Scott Peterson was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for both Laci and their unborn son. Often times, in many states, whenever a pregnant woman is slain, the criminal is charged with not one, but two counts of murder (the mother and the unborn child). While this is difficult to bring up, it does expose inconsistency -- if a pregnant woman is slain, additionally resulting in the death of the unborn child, and a vast majority of law enforcement agencies charge the offender with two counts of murder, then what is abortion exactly? Abortion does result in the death of an unborn child.
At the same time though, if you look on your Census long form, it doesn't ask if you have any current unborn children for statistical purposes. In fact, I seriously doubt that the Census Bureau actually counts yet-to-be-born-fetuses as statistical members of the population.
Are those extremes? Probably, but it does take into consideration in regards to what is considered life, what isn't considered life, and when and where the line of government intervention should be drawn, especially when abortion is actually a private, difficult decision for the mother or the mother and her partner. Right in there lies a question that has no objective answer. Should the dominion of the woman's body include the unborn child, and thus free from the intervening arms of government? Or should we consider the woman and the unborn child not one, but two separate distinct persons with individually recognized civil and human rights?
The lack of congruence in the life definition, even in our own legal system, speaks volumes and something to seriously consider when arguing for or against abortion.
Overall, a true tragedy in this debate is the shortsightedness practiced on all sides, and the avoidance of asking deep philosophical questions in regards to abortion, absolving ourselves to keep the debate emotional. Abortion is a debate that can't be solved by conformity with beliefs because even amongst the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" argumentative camps, there's vast fallacious inconsistency in the definition of when is the little thing in the woman's womb should be considered, well, a person, considering that people are all multicelluar beings that started when, well, two cells divided in the Fallopian tube after fertilization.
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